Organophosphate esters (OPEs), a kind of synthetic additive flame retardant, has good flame retardance and plasticity, and is widely used in a variety of products, such as textiles, electronic products and so on, involving all aspects of people's life (Cai et al., 2008; Wang et al., 2020). Since the polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) was banned, as the substitutes of PBDEs, OPEs has been increasingly produced and used (Xing et al., 2018). Until 2016, the global consumption of OPEs reached up to 405,000 tons (Lu et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2013). As the largest consumer of OPEs, China accounts for a quarter of global OPEs consumption each year (Lin et al., 2022). OPEs are added into products as additive material with a non-chemical bands, resulting in their easy release from the product into environment (Lin et al., 2022; Pantelaki and Voutsa, 2019). With the extensive use of OPEs, a large quantities of OPES are released into the environment during production, use and disposal (Lv et al., 2022). Resent years, OPEs are frequently detected in various environment matrices, such as water (Ding et al., 2015; Shi et al., 2020; Zhu et al., 2022), soil (You et al., 2022). Sediment (Liao et al., 2020; Ye et al., 2021), air (Cao et al., 2019), organisms (Greaves and Letcher, 2017; Guo et al., 2017), and so on. Additional, OPEs have been detected in wildlife tissues (Pantelaki and Voutsa, 2020) and human serum (Hu et al., 2021; Ma et al., 2017). Toxicological studies reported that OPEs have a variety of toxic, such as neurotoxicity, carcinogenicity, endocrine disruption, developmental and reproductive toxicity, and genetic toxicity (Li et al., 2019). Some halogenated OPEs are restricted in many countries and organizations due to their dangerous properties (ECHA, 2018). Therefore, it have been attracted extensive attention that the occurrence and potential ecological effects of OPEs in the environment.
Luoma Lake is one of the four freshwater lake with the total water surface area of 260 km (Xing et al., 2018). It is located in the northern of the Jiangsu province, where belonging to the three economic belts (coastal economic belt, along the Yangtze River Economic Belt, Longhai Economic Belt) cross radiation area. Luoma Lake is also the centralized public drinking water source in Jiangsu province. Lake water quality is very important to local public drinking water safety and regional ecological environment safety. As it is surrounded by multiple villages and factories, a large amount of domestic and industrial sewage flows directly or indirectly into Luoma Lake each year through tributaries, which are potential sources of pollution for OPEs (Dan et al., 2017; Yan et al., 2017). However, there are few study focusing on occurrence and distribution of OPEs in Luoma Lake.
Hence, the pollution and ecological risk of OPEs in freshwater lakes have received increasing attention. Studies have found that TCEP, TCPP, and TDCPP have potential carcinogenic. In the study, 11 OPEs containing the above 3 were selected for analysis in water and sediment of Luoma Lake. The objectives of this study were to: 1) investigate the concentration level and distribution characters Luoma Lake, 2) investigate the trend growth of OPEs, and 3) evaluate the ecological risk according to the risk quotient (RQ).