Solubility Enhancement Data, Toolik Lake Field Station, Alaska

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are a class of brominated flame retardant that is distally transported to the arctic. Little is known about the fate of PBDEs in arctic surface waters, especially in the presence of dissolved organic matter (DOM). DOM has been shown to interact with hydrophobic organic contaminants and can alter their mobility, bioavailability, and degradation. In this dataset, the partitioning of six PBDE congeners between Arctic DOM and water was measured using the aqueous solubility enhancement (SE) method. Measured dissolved organic carbon (DOC)-water equilibrium partition coefficients (KDOC) values were nearly an order of magnitude lower than previously reported values for the same PBDE congeners and are in units of L/kg of organic carbon. Measured results compared favorably with values calculated using poly-parameter linear free energy models (pp-LFER) developed for other DOM. Log KDOC values initially increased with increasing PBDE hydrophobicity but approached a threshold value of ~5, which is likely due to elevated steric hindrance of highly brominated congeners. This study is the first to comprehensively measure KDOC values for a range of PBDE congeners with DOM isolated from arctic surface waters. DATA ARE DUPLICATED IN MULTIPLE FILES: CSVs are provided to ease analysis along with the original XLS and XLSX files containing the same data for reference.