%0 journal article %@ 0013-9351 %A Suehring, R., Barber, J.L., Wolschke, H., Koetke, D., Ebinghaus, R. %D 2015 %J Environmental Research %P 569-578 %R doi:10.1016/j.envres.2015.05.018 %T Fingerprint analysis of brominated flame retardants and Dechloranes in North Sea sediments %U https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2015.05.018 %X In order to do that a fast and effective ASE extraction method with an on-line clean-up was developed as well as a GC-EI-MSMS and LC-ESI-MSMS method to analyse PBDEs, MeOBDEs, alternate BFRs, Dechloranes as well as TBBPA and HBCDD. A fingerprinting method was adopted to identify representative area-specific patterns based on detection frequency as well as concentrations of individual compounds. Concentrations in general were low, with<1 ng g−1 dw for most compounds. Exceptions were the comparably high concentrations of BDE-209 with up to 7 ng g−1 dw in selected samples and TBBPA in UK samples with 2.7±1.5 ng g−1 dw. Apart from BDE-209 and TBBPA, alternate BFRs and Dechloranes were predominant in all analysed samples, displaying the increasing relevance of these compounds as environmental contaminants.