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Rawn et al. J Environ Expo Assess 2024;3:16 https://dx.doi.org/10.20517/jeea.2024.04 Page 5 of 17

Table 1. Participant summary information corresponding to the PBDE and HBCD analysis
Characteristic Minimum Maximum Mean Median
n = 298
Born in Canada - 84.6%
Age (years) 21 46 33.6 34
Parity 1 5 - 2
Pre-pregnancy body mass index 16.6 48.6 24.6 23.1
Education level
Some or all high school 18
Some college 9
College or trade school completed 53
Undergraduate university completed 125
Graduate degree completed 93
PBDE: Polybrominated diphenyl ether; HBCD: hexabromocyclododecane.

Figure 1. MIREC participant population and samples used for PBDE/HBCD analysis. MIREC: Maternal-Infant Research on Environmental
Chemicals; PBDE: polybrominated diphenyl ether; HBCD: hexabromocyclododecane.

concentrated sulphuric acid (ACS grade, EMD; Ottawa, ON, Canada), followed by drying the extracts by
passing them through anhydrous sodium sulphate. Column chromatography was performed using activated
acidified silica gel, activated Florisil (60-100 mesh) (Fisher Scientific; Ottawa, ON, Canada), and carbon
{Carbopack C (60-80 mesh) [Supelco (Bellefonte, PA)]} in series to clean up and fractionate the extracts .
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Following clean-up, the extracts were evaporated just to dryness, reconstituted in 10 µL of the performance
standard and placed into v-vials for gas chromatographic-high resolution mass spectrometric analysis of
PBDEs.