Project Information

Founding Source: Unitatea Executiva pentru Finantarea Invatamantului Superior, a Cercetarii, Dezvoltarii si Inovarii (UEFISCDI)

Project Code: PN-II-RU-TE-2014-4-1010

Project No.: 282/01.10.2015

Project Title: Influence of the chromatographic analysis of flame retardants on the estimation of human exposure to organohalogenated compounds

Team members

The research team of this project is multidisciplinary consisting in qualified personnel with professional expertise relevant for the research topic. It is formed from a post-doctoral researcher (team leader), two postdoctoral researchers part time employed in different stages of the research, two young researchers PhD students (part time employed in different stages of the research).

Research team is formed from the following researchers:

Dr. Alin C. Dirtu: Principal investigator, Team leader. His role in this project concerns the scientific supervision of the project, the follow up of the activities and the management of the project and the preparation of the reports. Dr. Alin C. Dirtu is an internationally recognized scientist in the main research areas of: Analytical Chemistry of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), Method Development and Optimisation (analysis of trace and ultra-trace levels of various POPs and metabolites), Environmental Chemistry of various organic contaminants (http://www.researcherid.com/rid/P-1525-2014). The most important contributions in his research field followed two main directions:

Developing new analytical methodologies on the determination of selected POPs (mainly organochlorine pesticides-OCPs, polychlorinated biphenyls-PCBs and brominated flame retardants-BFRs) as well as for the analysis of the metabolites of some organic contaminants including hydroxylated-PCBs (metabolites of PCBs) and phthalate metabolites.

Applicability of the developed analytical methodologies, together with other analysis protocols, in order to measure the contamination levels and profiles of several types of matrices. Most of the methods were applied for the analysis of selected POPs and other organic contaminants from biological samples including serum (collected from humans, cats, birds), biological tissues (liver, adipose tissue, muscle), urine (humans), hair as well as other types of samples such as soil, sediments, indoor dust or food samples.

Dr. Dan Maftei: Postdoctoral researcher (doctor since 2014). He has experience (http://www.researcherid.com/rid/G-2798-2014) in the field of computational chemistry. His main role in this project concerns the planning and executing of all theoretical computations by the use of different methodologies (DFT or ab initio calculations) on molecules involving both regulated and also new brominated FRs

Dr. Mihai Dumitras: Postdoctoral researcher (doctor since 2008). He has a large experience (http://www.researcherid.com/rid/P-2382-2014) in the field of thermogravimetric analysis and chemical kinetics. His main role in this project concerns the planning and executing of all thermal behavior/degradation experiments for both regulated and new brominated FRs.

Georgiana Mardare (căs. Bălușescu), PhD student involved in the GC analysis of the selected FRs

Dragoș Isac, PhD student involved in the theoretical computations.

Ștefan Bucur, PhD student involved in the theoretical computations and sample preparation experiments (extraction, fractionation, concentration).