Introduction of emerging halogenated flame retardants in the environment

Many chemicals have been produced to replace the banned or regulated legacy flame retardants in diverse consumer products, and some are classified as emerging halogenated flame retardants. Most of the emerging halogenated flame retardants are additive in nature (i.e. added or mixed to their constituted materials, rather than being chemically bonded to them), so they ultimately leach out of these materials into the environment and have been widely detected in diverse environmental matrices, including air/atmospheric particles, water/wastewater, soil, sediment, dust, sludge, landfill leachates, foodstuffs, and biota, as well as in human samples such as serum and breast milk. Hence, knowledge of their major classes, physicochemical properties, global production and usage amounts, industrial and commercial applications as well as general research trends is instrumental to understand their environmental fates and manage the use/disposal of these chemicals in the environment. This book chapter is therefore dedicated to providing vital basic information on representative emerging halogenated flame retardants.