Is hexabromodiphenyl ether in my mattress?

Almost certainly not. Hexabromodiphenyl ethers reached the market inside commercial octabromodiphenyl ether, and ATSDR's use chapter says that mixture was used almost exclusively to flame retard ABS terpolymers in computer casings and monitors. The PBDE mixture that went into beds was commercial pentaBDE, used almost exclusively in flexible polyurethane foam. Both mixtures were withdrawn from the US market at the end of 2004, so a mattress bought today is not a hexaBDE source.

Why does a sleep-environment site cover a flame retardant from old electronics?

Because of where the dust ends up. ATSDR attributes 80 to 90 percent of general-population PBDE exposure to ingestion of and skin contact with house dust, rather than to air, food or water. Bromine that left a computer casing twenty years ago does not stay in the room it was in; it becomes dust that is vacuumed, tracked and resuspended through the house, including the room where a person spends the longest uninterrupted stretch of contact with settled dust and with their own hands.

How long does hexabromodiphenyl ether stay in the body?

Longer than the other common PBDEs. Trudel and colleagues (2011) report a median elimination half-life of about seven years for BDE-153, a hexaBDE congener, against one to three years for the other common congeners and four to seven days for BDE-209. In the 2003-2004 NHANES cycle, BDE-153 was the second most abundant PBDE in the serum of the US population aged 12 and over at a geometric mean of 5.7 ng/g lipid. US serum levels have fallen since; a current hexaBDE-specific figure is not quoted here.

Is hexabromodiphenyl ether banned?

Yes, in the major jurisdictions. The Stockholm Convention listed it under Annex A for elimination in 2009 by decision SC-4/14, with a specific exemption allowing articles containing it to be recycled. In the EU it sits in Annex I Part A of Regulation (EU) 2019/1021, where manufacture, placing on the market and use are prohibited subject to the exemptions the Annex records. Canada captures it by formula in the Prohibition of Certain Toxic Substances Regulations, 2025. The United States is the softer case: both mixtures were voluntarily withdrawn from the market at the end of 2004, and whether EPA's proposed TSCA significant new use rule was finalised is not confirmed by the EPA page we checked. Ban is not the same as absence: the material already in circulation is what remains.

Hexabromodiphenyl Ether (hexaBDE): Where It Comes From

At a glance

Chemical family	PBDE (hexa-brominated diphenyl ether), formula C₁₂H₄Br₆O — one of the congener groups found in commercial octabromodiphenyl ether
CAS number	36483-60-0 (the hexabrominated diphenyl ether group, not a single congener — the EU POPs Annex and GOV.UK both record it as "36483-60-0 and others", EC "253-058-6 and others")
Classification	Stockholm Convention Annex A (elimination), decision SC-4/14, 2009; EU POPs Regulation Annex I Part A, prohibited. Not evaluated by IARC. EPA IRIS: "Not assessed under the IRIS Program" for both noncancer and cancer, with only a 1990 weight-of-evidence of "D — not classifiable", based on no human and no animal data
Where you encounter it	Settled house dust, as a legacy residue. The source reservoir is pre-2005 ABS plastic housings for computers, monitors and televisions, plus articles made from recycled bromine-bearing plastic under the Stockholm recycling exemption. Not a mattress emission
Sleep micro environment relevance	Indirect. ATSDR attributes 80 to 90 percent of general-population PBDE exposure to house dust rather than air, food or water; the bedroom is where a person accumulates the most hours of contact with settled dust. No study we could verify has measured hexaBDE congeners in mattresses or in the sleeping microenvironment specifically
Body burden	BDE-153, a hexaBDE congener, was the second most abundant PBDE in US serum in the 2003-2004 NHANES cycle at a geometric mean of 5.7 ng/g lipid, and has a median elimination half-life of about seven years — the slowest of the common PBDEs
Inhalation reference value	None published. There is no concentration against which a measured bedroom air or dust level could be judged

Regulatory & certification status

Where hexabromodiphenyl ether stands across the major regulatory systems. Each row links to the governing instrument. Where a jurisdiction's position could not be read at source, that is said plainly rather than smoothed over.

European Union	Prohibited. Hexabromodiphenyl ether sits in Annex I Part A of Regulation (EU) 2019/1021, the POPs Regulation, and Article 3(1) reads: "The manufacturing, placing on the market and use of substances listed in Annex I, whether on their own, in mixtures or in articles, shall be prohibited, subject to Article 4." That is a ban, not an identification: the REACH Candidate List only names a substance, and a CLP entry only assigns a hazard statement. The Annex records the entry as a group — CAS "36483-60-0 and others", EC "253-058-6 and others". Article 4(1)(b) relief for unintentional trace contamination applies at or below 10 mg/kg (0,001 % by weight) in substances, with derogations for electrical and electronic equipment and for articles already in use before the listing took effect. Regulatory — EUR-Lex
EU harmonised classification	None. The CLP Annex VI table carries an entry for "diphenyl ether, pentabromo derivative" (index 602-083-00-4, EC 251-084-2, CAS 32534-81-9) and nothing for the hexabromo derivative. Read that carefully: absence from Annex VI is not absence of hazard. Annex VI covers only the harmonised subset, and everything outside it is classified by industry itself. Hexabromodiphenyl ether is also absent from the REACH Candidate List — decaBDE is the only PBDE there, added 19 December 2012 as PBT/vPvB — because it is controlled by prohibition under the POPs Regulation instead, which is the stronger instrument. Regulatory — ECHA CLP Annex VI
United States	No carcinogen listing and no published toxicity value. EPA's IRIS entry for CASRN 36483-60-0 records "Not assessed under the IRIS Program" for both noncancer effects and cancer risk estimates, leaving only a 1990 weight-of-evidence characterization of "D (Not classifiable as to human carcinogenicity)" whose stated basis is "No human data and no animal data available." ATSDR's 2017 profile states that "The Department of Health and Human Services has not classified PBDEs as carcinogens." It is not on California's Proposition 65: the only PBDE entry on that list is "pentabromodiphenyl ether mixture [DE-71 (technical grade)]", listed for cancer on 7 July 2017. Under TSCA, EPA proposed a Significant New Use Rule covering processing of the six PBDE congeners contained in c-pentaBDE or c-octaBDE for uses that are not ongoing; whether that rule was finalised is not confirmed by the EPA page we checked. Commercial pentaBDE and octaBDE were voluntarily withdrawn from the US market at the end of 2004. Regulatory — EPA IRIS · OEHHA
Canada	Prohibited, but captured by formula rather than by name. The Prohibition of Certain Toxic Substances Regulations, 2025 (SOR/2025-270) list at item 14 of Schedule 1 "Polybrominated diphenyl ethers that have the molecular formula C12H(10-n)BrnO in which 4≤n≤10". Hexabromodiphenyl ether is n=6, inside that range, so it is covered without ever being named. The regulation carries authorised uses for manufactured items imported before it took effect, for items in motor vehicles, and for certain electrical and electronic equipment applications with deadlines running from 31 December 2026. PBDEs are also on the CEPA Schedule 1 List of Toxic Substances; the Schedule 1 page returned HTTP 403 to this machine, so the exact Schedule 1 wording was not read at source and is not quoted here. Regulatory — Canada Gazette
United Kingdom	Prohibited. Regulation (EU) 2019/1021 is assimilated law in Great Britain and is enforced through the Persistent Organic Pollutants Regulations 2007 (SI 2007/3106). GOV.UK's guidance "Using persistent organic pollutants (POPs)" reproduces the Annex I entry verbatim: "Hexabromodiphenyl ether / Chemical formula: C12H4Br6O / CAS number: 36483-60-0 and others / EC number: 253-058-6 and others". Regulatory — GOV.UK · UK legislation
Australia	Not verified at source. Australia manages the substance through the Industrial Chemicals Environmental Management Standard (IChEMS) Register under a combined octaBDE / heptaBDE / hexaBDE entry, and secondary summaries place it at Schedule 7. The DCCEEW register page timed out on every attempt from this machine, so neither the schedule number nor its effective date is asserted here. Treat Australia as unresolved on this page until the register entry is opened directly. Inferred — secondary summary of a source page that could not be loaded
International	Listed under Annex A of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, the elimination annex, at the fourth Conference of the Parties in 2009 by decision SC-4/14, as "Hexabromodiphenyl ether and heptabromodiphenyl ether". The listing carries "a specific exemption for use as articles containing these chemicals for recycling in accordance with the provision in Part IV of Annex A" — the clause that let bromine from old electronics keep circulating in recycled plastic long after new production stopped. Regulatory — Stockholm Convention
The 72-hour test window	Missed entirely. Hexabromodiphenyl ethers have negligible vapour pressure and move as dust-bound particles over years, so a short VOC emissions chamber test is measuring the wrong thing. Detecting them requires dust or material sampling, not air sampling. Inferred — from the compound's transport behaviour versus what a short chamber test measures

What it is

Hexabromodiphenyl ether is a flame retardant built on the same skeleton as the rest of the PBDE family: two phenyl rings joined by an oxygen, with bromine atoms hung off them. Six bromines gives the formula C₁₂H₄Br₆O. Bromine interrupts the radical chain reaction that keeps a fire going, which is why brominated additives were mixed into plastics and foams by weight for three decades.

The name covers a group, not one molecule. Regulators write it that way on purpose. The EU POPs Annex records the entry as CAS "36483-60-0 and others" with EC "253-058-6 and others", GOV.UK reproduces those same values, and ECHA titles its substance page "Hexabromodiphenyl ether (group)". Chemical databases will often attach a single structure to that CAS number for indexing convenience. Reading that as a precise identification of one congener claims more than the regulation does.

Commercially, hexaBDE congeners reached the market inside commercial octabromodiphenyl ether. The Stockholm Convention listed them under the paired entry "Hexabromodiphenyl ether and heptabromodiphenyl ether", decision SC-4/14. That matters more than it sounds, because it settles where the compound came from. Whether hexaBDE congeners also made up any meaningful fraction of commercial pentaBDE, the mixture that went into furniture foam, is a number we could not verify at source and so do not state.

Where it shows up

Old electronics housings, not beds. ATSDR's use chapter is blunt about where commercial octaBDE went: it "was used almost exclusively to flame retard ABS terpolymers used in computer casings and monitors." Regulatory That is a desktop PC and its monitor, not a mattress. The same chapter says of commercial pentaBDE that it "was used almost exclusively to flame retard flexible polyurethane foam (FPUF), which is used in bed mattresses and cushioning in upholstered products." Two mixtures, two entirely different product categories. Anyone selling you a hexaBDE-free mattress is selling you a property every mattress already has.

House dust, which is how it actually reaches people. ATSDR's public health statement puts the number plainly: "Ingestion of house dust (and to a lesser degree skin exposure to house dust) accounts for between 80 and 90% of total PBDE exposures of the general population." Regulatory Bromine that left an ABS casing in 2003 did not stay in the room with the computer. It bound to dust, and dust gets vacuumed, tracked, resuspended and redeposited across a whole house over years. The bedroom is simply where a person accumulates the most hours of contact with what settles.

Recycled plastic. The Stockholm Annex A listing carries "a specific exemption for use as articles containing these chemicals for recycling in accordance with the provision in Part IV of Annex A." Regulatory New production stopped; recirculation did not. The exemption is the reason bromine from twenty-year-old electronics can turn up in plastic articles made long after the ban.

What the research says

It is in the general population

Sjödin et al. (2008) measured PBDEs in the serum of the US population aged 12 and over in the 2003-2004 NHANES cycle. "The congener with the highest serum concentration was 2,2',4,4'-tetrabromodiphenyl ether (BDE-47) [geometric mean 20.5 ng/g lipid]; followed by 2,2',4,4',5,5'-hexaBDE (BDE-153) [5.7 ng/g lipid]". Peer-reviewed A hexaBDE congener sat second in a nationally representative sample. US serum PBDE levels have fallen substantially since that cycle, and we have not verified a current hexaBDE-specific figure, so treat 5.7 ng/g lipid as a 2003-2004 measurement rather than a description of today.

It leaves the body slowly

Trudel and colleagues modelled total consumer PBDE exposure across North America and Europe and reported that "Median elimination half-lives are in a range of 1-3 years except for BDE-153 with about seven years and BDE-209 with 4-7 days." Peer-reviewed Seven years against four to seven days is a difference of more than two orders of magnitude between two compounds in the same chemical family. It is also the reason a hexaBDE result on a blood panel says little about the past month and a great deal about the past decade.

Children born long after the ban still carry PBDEs

Hoffman and colleagues followed children aged three to six in the TESIE study, sampling their homes alongside their bodies. "PBDEs were detected in all serum samples and TBBA was detected in 43% of urine samples." Peer-reviewed Every child, roughly two decades after the mixtures left the market. That is what a persistent, dust-bound contaminant with a slow clearance rate looks like on the other side of a successful ban.

Nobody can tell you what level is safe indoors

EPA's IRIS record for CASRN 36483-60-0 reads "Not assessed under the IRIS Program" for both noncancer effects and cancer risk estimates. Regulatory The only substantive entry is a 1990 cancer weight-of-evidence of "D (Not classifiable as to human carcinogenicity)", and its stated basis is "No human data and no animal data available." No inhalation reference concentration exists, which means a measured bedroom dust or air level has nothing to be compared against. Presence is not dose, and here the dose side of the sentence has never been written. This compound belongs in the Dose Gap for exactly that reason: measured in people, no inhalation benchmark.

What helps

This is a housekeeping problem, and that is good news. The reservoir is settled dust, the route is hand-to-mouth, and both are things you can act on this week without buying anything expensive.

Vacuum and wet-dust on a routine, with a sealed HEPA vacuum. ATSDR's own advice is that "PBDE exposure may be decreased by regular vacuuming and cleaning of air ducts and filters to reduce indoor dust levels." Regulatory Dry sweeping puts the reservoir back into the air. Wet wiping and sealed-filter vacuuming take it out of the house.

Wash hands before eating and before bed. ATSDR again: "Dust containing PBDEs can collect on your hands and be ingested through hand-to-mouth activities; regular hand washing may decrease PBDE exposure from this route." Regulatory This matters most for small children, who spend their time on the floor where the dust is and put their hands in their mouths.

Retire the actual reservoir: pre-2005 foam furniture and old CRT televisions, monitors and computer housings. The ABS casings are the specific hexaBDE source. ATSDR notes that "replacing older products with newer ones that do not contain these substances may decrease residential PBDE exposure." Regulatory A twenty-year-old monitor in a spare room is doing nothing for you and is quietly feeding the dust.

Keep old foam physically sealed. Torn upholstery and split covers on pre-2005 furniture shed foam crumb straight into the dust stream. Whether that crumb carries hexaBDE at all is unresolved — the foam mixture was pentaBDE, and the hexa fraction of it is a number we could not verify — but it certainly carries the pentaBDE congeners, so an intact cover is worth having either way. Inferred — reasoning from the dust-transport pathway, not a measured intervention

Wash bedding often, and keep the floor around the bed clear enough that you will actually clean it. The cleaning you do is worth more than the cleaning you plan.

What does not help

Airing out a mattress, or waiting for a smell to fade. Hexabromodiphenyl ethers have negligible vapour pressure. They travel as dust-bound particles over years, not as an odour that dissipates over days, so nothing about ventilation timing applies here. Inferred
Buying a new mattress to reduce hexaBDE specifically. Commercial pentaBDE and octaBDE were withdrawn from the US market at the end of 2004. A mattress bought today is not a hexaBDE source. Replacing pre-2005 foam furniture and old electronics is a genuinely different action, and that one is worth doing.
Carbon-infused sleepwear, "detox" toppers and similar bedding products. No evidence supports any of them removing a persistent, particle-bound contaminant from settled dust. The route they would need to interrupt is hand-to-mouth ingestion, not skin contact with a fabric. Inferred
Drinking-water filtration. ATSDR: "Due to the chemical nature of PBDEs, they have not been detected in water to any significant extent; therefore, drinking water is not expected to be a major route of exposure to PBDEs." Regulatory This is the opposite of the PFOA situation, and the two get confused constantly.
Reading "no harmonised EU classification" as "no hazard". CLP Annex VI covers only the harmonised subset. Hexabromodiphenyl ether is absent from it because it is controlled by outright prohibition under the POPs Regulation instead, which is the stronger measure, not the weaker one.

Open research questions

No published inhalation reference value exists, so there is no concentration against which a measured bedroom dust or air level could be judged. Until one exists, every indoor hexaBDE measurement is a presence statement and nothing more. Regulatory
No study we could verify has measured hexaBDE congeners in mattresses or in the sleeping microenvironment specifically. The two 2025 Canadian sleeping-microenvironment studies measured phthalates, organophosphate esters and UV filters, not PBDEs. Speculation
What fraction of commercial pentaBDE, the mixture that actually went into mattress foam, consisted of hexaBDE congeners. The per-congener weight percentages exist in the published literature but sit in full text we could not open, so the number stays unstated. It decides whether hexaBDE has any direct foam pathway at all or is purely an electronics-derived dust contaminant. Speculation
The current hexaBDE-specific US serum figure. The 5.7 ng/g lipid on this page is from the 2003-2004 NHANES cycle; levels have declined since and a current cycle value was not verified for this page. Speculation
Australia's IChEMS schedule assignment, which we could not open at source, and the exact CEPA Schedule 1 wording for PBDEs, which returned an HTTP 403. Both are stated as unresolved above rather than filled in from secondary summaries. Speculation

The exposure ledger for Hexabromodiphenyl ether (hexaBDE)

One chemical, several public questions, answered from independent datasets and joined here — the environment it shows up in, the body burden it carries, how it is regulated, and what actually reduces it.

This compound appears in 1 of our 10 exposure datasets.

At what level would it matter?

This compound does not appear in EPA’s consolidated screening-level table at all, so no published inhalation reference value exists to set against the findings on this page. That is common for newer substances and for replacements brought in after an older compound was restricted. What this page documents is that the compound is present, not how much of it would matter. Presence is not dose.Source: US EPA, Regional Screening Levels (RSL) Summary Table

Does the law flag it?

Banned in the EU under the persistent organic pollutants Regulation: manufacture, sale and use are prohibited. Specific exemptions apply.Source: California OEHHA Prop 65 listSource: EU POPs Regulation

Detection and body-burden figures are occurrence data, not a personal measurement or a health diagnosis. Part of the Embr Exposure Ledger — an open, cross-dataset chemical join (download the data), reusable with attribution.

Where you meet Hexabromodiphenyl Ether across your home

The same compound turns up in more than one place you live. Here's where it shows up in Embr — each links to the full breakdown for that part of your home.

Your house dust

Citations

Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Division of Toxicology and Human Health Sciences (2017). "Public Health Statement: Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDEs)." U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service. atsdr.cdc.gov Regulatory
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (2017). "Toxicological Profile for Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers — Chapter 5: Production, Import/Export, Use, and Disposal." U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. atsdr.cdc.gov Regulatory
Secretariat of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, United Nations Environment Programme (2009). "Hexabromodiphenyl ether and heptabromodiphenyl ether — listing under Annex A, decision SC-4/14." pops.int Regulatory
European Parliament and Council of the European Union (2019). "Regulation (EU) 2019/1021 on persistent organic pollutants (recast) — consolidated text 02019R1021-20260101, Article 3 and Annex I Part A." Official Journal of the European Union. EUR-Lex Regulatory
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Integrated Risk Information System, Office of Research and Development (1990). "Hexabromodiphenyl ether; CASRN 36483-60-0 — IRIS Chemical Assessment Summary." cfpub.epa.gov Regulatory
Sjödin A, Wong LY, Jones RS, Park A, Zhang Y, Hodge C, Dipietro E, McClure C, Turner W, Needham LL, Patterson DG (2008). "Serum concentrations of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and polybrominated biphenyl (PBB) in the United States population: 2003-2004." Environmental Science & Technology. DOI 10.1021/es702451p (PMID 18351120) Peer-reviewed
Trudel D, Scheringer M, von Goetz N, Hungerbühler K (2011). "Total consumer exposure to polybrominated diphenyl ethers in North America and Europe." Environmental Science & Technology. DOI 10.1021/es1035046 (PMID 21348481) Peer-reviewed
Hoffman K, Tang X, Cooper EM, Hammel SC, Sjodin A, Phillips AL, Webster TF, Stapleton HM (2024). "Children's exposure to brominated flame retardants in the home: The TESIE study." Environmental Pollution. DOI 10.1016/j.envpol.2024.124110 (PMID 38723705) Peer-reviewed

Frequently asked questions

Is hexabromodiphenyl ether in my mattress?

Almost certainly not. Hexabromodiphenyl ethers reached the market inside commercial octabromodiphenyl ether, and ATSDR's use chapter says that mixture was used almost exclusively to flame retard ABS terpolymers in computer casings and monitors. The PBDE mixture that went into beds was commercial pentaBDE, used almost exclusively in flexible polyurethane foam. Both mixtures were withdrawn from the US market at the end of 2004, so a mattress bought today is not a hexaBDE source.
Why does a sleep-environment site cover a flame retardant from old electronics?

Because of where the dust ends up. ATSDR attributes 80 to 90 percent of general-population PBDE exposure to ingestion of and skin contact with house dust, rather than to air, food or water. Bromine that left a computer casing twenty years ago does not stay in the room it was in; it becomes dust that is vacuumed, tracked and resuspended through the house, including the room where a person spends the longest uninterrupted stretch of contact with settled dust and with their own hands.
How long does hexabromodiphenyl ether stay in the body?

Longer than the other common PBDEs. Trudel and colleagues (2011) report a median elimination half-life of about seven years for BDE-153, a hexaBDE congener, against one to three years for the other common congeners and four to seven days for BDE-209. In the 2003-2004 NHANES cycle, BDE-153 was the second most abundant PBDE in the serum of the US population aged 12 and over at a geometric mean of 5.7 ng/g lipid. US serum levels have fallen since; a current hexaBDE-specific figure is not quoted here.
Is hexabromodiphenyl ether banned?

Yes, in the major jurisdictions. The Stockholm Convention listed it under Annex A for elimination in 2009 by decision SC-4/14, with a specific exemption allowing articles containing it to be recycled. In the EU it sits in Annex I Part A of Regulation (EU) 2019/1021, where manufacture, placing on the market and use are prohibited subject to the exemptions the Annex records. Canada captures it by formula in the Prohibition of Certain Toxic Substances Regulations, 2025. The United States is the softer case: both mixtures were voluntarily withdrawn from the market at the end of 2004, and whether EPA's proposed TSCA significant new use rule was finalised is not confirmed by the EPA page we checked. Ban is not the same as absence: the material already in circulation is what remains.

Related compounds

Embr is a sleep environment company researching and addressing the chemistry of the bedroom. Our work on flame retardants focuses on capture at the sleep-surface interface — research and product development in progress.

Last reviewed 2026-07-25. If you find a factual error, contact us.

Hexabromodiphenyl ether (hexaBDE)