*Plant Uptake, Translocation and Metabolism of PBDEs in Plants DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95790*

*Flame Retardant and Thermally Insulating Polymers*

*BDE-47 – Concentration in shoot as function of corresponding soil concentration.*

concentration of the compounds in soil. A dependency of the uptake on the crop species might have been expected, but cannot be proven by the present data set.

*BDE-47 and BDE-209 – Comparison of concentrations in soil, root and shoot (normalized, c(soil) =1).*

PBDEs were widely used as flame retardants. Due to their effects as endocrine disruptors, neurotoxins, and on reproductive capacity as well, knowledge of terrestrial accumulation behavior and, in particular, their uptake by plants for food production is highly relevant. Uptake can occur viasoil-air-plant pathway as well as soil–soil water-root-plant pathway. Transport and plant uptake behavior strongly depend on physical and chemical properties of the BDEs, environmental factors, large-scale atmospheric transport processes, plant properties as well as terrestrial rhizospheres. During both atmospheric and terrestrial transport PBDEs are subject to UV-induced (atmospheric) or microbial induced (terrestrial) transformation

**78**

**9. Conclusion**

**Figure 7.**

**Figure 6.**

and degradation processes like debromination, hydroxylation, methoxylation and ring closure to dibenzofurans. As PBDEs reveal high lipophilicity they tend to adsorption on lipophilic soil matrices and thereby show low uptake via soil–soil water-root-plant pathway and subsequent intrinsic transport. Hence, uptake and intrinsic transport are only expected for low brominated BDEs. Therefore, declining concentrations of PBDEs could be detected from soil via roots to shoots and final fruits, i.e. RCF and TF show negative correlation with their log KOW values. Consistent with this statement, 84% of the human PBDE intake are attributed to respiration and inhalation of dust, while only 16% were correlated with dietary uptake. The actual exposure of vegetarian foods to PBDEs depends on the following parameters:

