Mossphere: a new biotechnological passive sampler for environmental air quality management
(1) CRETUS, Ecology Unit, Dept. Functional Biology, Faculty of Biology, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
Up to now, concentrations of atmospheric pollutants determined in moss bags have not been significantly correlated with concentrations determined in bulk deposition. Hence, we evaluated a new type of passive air sampler ‘Mossphere’ filled with the Sphagnum palustre clone comparing the atmospheric levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) collected by this device and those collected in conventional bulk deposition and particulate matter PM10 samplers. The comparison between bulk deposition/Mossphere yielded a greater number of significant regressions with higher coefficients of determination than the comparison between PM10/Mossphere. This means that this innovative device can be used to map intermediate, heavy, and total PAHs levels in both urban and industrial areas by establishing quantitative relationships between air and PAHs concentrations determined in the Mossphere. To test the reliability of these findings, for the first time, intensive monitoring and mapping of PAHs was carried out in a medium-sized European city (Logroño, La Rioja, Spain) where 84 Mosspheres were placed on a 575 m grid for three months. Moss tissue concentrations of 15 priority PAHs, were determined and converted to PM10 and bulk deposition with the equations proposed in the first study. Low PAHs concentrations were detected, with only a few enriched points never exceeding legal thresholds, but despite these low PAHs levels, Mosspheres was able to detect the spatial structure of several PAHs and high-resolution pollution maps were constructed for these compounds. In brief, due to the robustness, the high sensitivity and suitability of this Mossphere biossampling system, we suggest the inclusion of the device in governmental environmental management future programmes and in European Directives on air quality monitoring.
Keywords: Air pollution, Biomonitoring, Mapping, Moss, Passive air sampler, Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
