In generally, commercial PCB preparations have been reported to contain toxic polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs) . It is also known PCDFs are formed by heating of PCB. Sometimes, the fluorescent light condensers are exploded by over-heating, and a PCB preparation (KC-300) as an insulator in the condensers was sprinkled around rooms.
In this paper, toxic PCDFs and PCDDs in the insulator of fluorescent light condensers were examined using capillary GC / high resolution MS (HRMS) . The concentration of PCDFs in the insulators was 1948 ppb, while that in unused KC-300 was 3385 ppb. No change in the values between in the exploded and unexploded insulators was observed, PCDFs in insulators and KC-300 were respectively composed of tetra- (TCDFs) through hexachlorinated dibenzofurans (HxCDFs) and TCDFs through heptachlorinated ones (HpCDFs) . TCDFs was the main component in all samples. However, the contents of TCDFs plus pentachlorinated dibenzofurans (PeCDFs) in total PCDFs of the exploded and unexploded insulators were different from that of KC-300. Namely, while the content of TCDFs plus PeCDFs in total PCDFs of KC-300 was 83.7%, those in exploded and unexploded insulators were 96.4% and 97.2%, respectively.
On the other hand, 2, 3, 7, 8-TCDD toxicity equivalent (TEQ) levels of PCDFs were calculated by international toxicity equivalent factor (I-TEF) . The total TEQ levels of PCDFs in KC-300, the insulators of exploded and unexploded condensers were 88.4 ppb, 50.0 ppb and 45.1 ppb, respectively.
No PCDFs were detected in KC-300 and the insulators of fluorescent light condensers.
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