Development of Passive Sampling for Water Quality Assessment and for Simulating the Bioconcentration in Aquatic Organism Under Pulsed Exposure Conditions

Water quality criteria have been established to protect the aquatic environment and its inhabitants from pollutants. Commonly, water is sampled from a river or lake and analysed to establish the presence and concentration of pollutants. As concentrations of pollutants vary, extensive sampling campaigns are needed to establish the exposure of wildlife to pollutants. Passive sampling is a technique that was developed to reduce the costs and enhance the quality of these monitoring campaigns. Passive sampling shares a number of features with bioconcentration, further underlying the biological relevance of the technique. However, it is not yet resolved how passive sampling relates to the kinetics of bioconcentration of different polar pollutants. Furthermore, a problem with passive sampling is that the uptake of chemicals into a sampler depends on environmental factors, such as water flow rate. Converting passive sampling data to aqueous concentrations is thus problematic.

The main aim of the project is to make passive sampling a more robust technique and to better understand its biological relevance. To do this, we will devise a system that can be used to correct passive sampling data for effects of environmental conditions, and we will compare passive sampling to bioconcentration in various biota (algae, daphnids and fish eggs).

Funding

Swiss National Science Foundation

Publications

Vermeirssen, E.L.M. C. Dietschweiler, B.I. Escher, J. van der Voet, J. Hollender. 2012. Transfer kinetics of polar organic compounds over polyethersulfone membranes in the passive samplers POCIS and Chemcatcher. Environ. Sci. Technol. 46: 6759-6766.

Vermeirssen, E.L.M. C. Dietschweiler, B.I. Escher, J. van der Voet, J. Hollender. Uptake and release kinetics of  22 polar organic chemicals in the Chemcatcher passive sampler. Anal. Bioanal. Chem. in press.

Vermeirssen E. L.M., J. Hollender, N. Bramaz, J. van der Voet, B. I. Escher. 2010. Linking toxicity in algal and bacterial assays with chemical analysis in passive samplers deployed in 21 treated

sewage effluents. Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 29: 2575-2582.

Vermeirssen E. L.M., J. Hollender, N. Bramaz, J. van der Voet, B. I. Escher. Linking toxicity in algal and bacterial assays with chemical analysis in passive samplers deployed in 21 treated sewage effluents. Environ. Toxicol. Chem. in press.

Vermeirssen, Etiënne L. M. .Bramaz, J. Hollender, H. Singer, B. I. Escher. (2009). Passive sampling combined with ecotoxicological and chemical analysis of pharmaceuticals and biocides - evaluation of three ChemcatcherTM configurations, Water Res 43(4):903-914.

Vermeirssen, E.L.M., J. Asmin, B. I. Escher, J.-H. Kwon, I. Steimen J. Hollender. 2008. The role of hydrodynamics, matrix and sampling duration in passive sampling of polar compounds with Empore™ SDB-RPS disks, J. Environ. Monitor. 10: 119-128.