Deriving aquatic life criteria for PBDEs in China and comparison of species sensitivity distribution with TBBPA and HBCD Chunxia Lu a,b,1 , Suwen Yang c,1 , Zhenguang Yan a, ⁎, Junhong Ling a , Lixin Jiao c , Huanqi He a , Xin Zheng a , Weidong Jin c , Juntao Fan a a State Key Laboratory of Environmental Criteria and Risk Assessment, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing 100012, PR China b Key Lab for Resources Use & Environmental Remediation, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resource Research, Beijing 100101, PR China c National Engineering Laboratory for Lake Pollution Control and Ecological Restoration, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, 100012, PR China HIGHLIGHTS • PBDEs are emerging pollutants of grow- ing concern. • The ecological risk of PBDEs is hard to assess due to the absence of WQC. • The acute and chronic WQC for PeBDE were developed in this study. • Toxicity rank of five brominated flame retardants was TBBPA N PeBDE N OcBDE N DeBDE N HBCD. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT abstract article info Article history: Received 20 March 2018 Received in revised form 1 June 2018 Accepted 1 June 2018 Available online xxxx Editor: Adrian Covaci Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are important industrial brominated flame retardants. PBDEs have raised great concerns for their persistence, bioaccumulation, and harm to aquatic life and human health. Pentabromodiphenyl ether (PeBDE), octabromodiphenyl ether (OcBDE), and decabromodiphenyl ether (DeBDE) are three main commercial PBDEs congeners. In this study, published ecotoxicity data of these three PBDEs congeners for Chinese freshwater species were collected, and several acute and chronic toxicity tests for the three PBDEs congeners were performed. Using the derivation method for aquatic life criteria developed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), we determined that the criterion maximum con- centration (CMC) for PeBDE, OcBDE and DeBDE for protection of freshwater organisms were 0.0492 mg/L, 0.197 mg/L and 0.239 mg/L, respectively. The criterion continuous concentration (CCC) for PeBDE, OcBDE and DeBDE were 0.0103 mg/L, 0.0224 mg/L and 0.0267 mg/L, respectively. The results provided a good reference for the derivation of PBDEs' water quality criteria and a basis for ecological risk assessment of PBDEs. In addition, the results of species sensitivity distribution comparison showed that the toxicity rank of five brominated flame retardants was TBBPA N PeBDE N OcBDE N DeBDE N HBCD. © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Emerging pollutant Brominated flame retardant Water quality criteria SSD 1. Introduction Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are important industrial brominated flame retardants (Chiu et al., 2012; Eljarrat and Barcelo, Science of the Total Environment 640–641 (2018) 1279–1285 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: zgyan@craes.org.cn (Z. Yan). 1 Chunxia Lu and Suwen Yang are co-first authors. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.06.002 0048-9697/© 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Science of the Total Environment journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/scitotenv