Comment on 'Mutagenic Azo Dyes, Rather Than Flame Retardants, Are the Predominant Brominated Compounds in House Dust'

摘要

In a recent publication, Peng et al. made a significant contribution to our knowledge of brominated organic compounds in the indoor environment with their report identifying brominated dinitroaniline as a contaminant related to azo dyes in house dust.1 However, we have found several errors in the mass spectrometry and subsequent data treatment, which precluded the authors from identifying the putative azo dye compounds discussed. Serendipitously, we had recently analyzed similar house dust extracts (samples described previously2) with a nontargeted LC-MS/MS method using a higher-performance mass spectrometer (Orbitrap Fusion, ThermoFisher Scientific) under very similar conditions to those reported by the authors, and based on our analysis of these data we can now identify the correct structures.