Passive sampling // Principle

Pesticides, pharmaceutical residues, hormones and other endocrine disruptors are all micropollutants that inevitably find their way into the aquatic environment via various discharge routes. As the range of compounds found in the environment expands daily, their reliable measurement is a crucial step. What’s more, these analyses are only relevant if they are based on samples that are representative of the contamination in the environment.

At present, spot samples are taken to assess and monitor the quality of water bodies (whether coastal, estuarine, continental, bathing, surface or drinking). This raises the question of the representativeness of the quantities acquired, particularly in terms of temporal representativeness. The concentration of organic compounds can change rapidly over the course of a day. Even if spot sampling is simple to implement, it only provides part of the information on the state of contamination of the environment.

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Passive sampling is a sampling technique recently developed in research laboratories. It involves placing a device in the environment to be sampled and leaving it in place for a few days to several weeks. The sampler will accumulate the substances for which it was designed, throughout the period of deployment.

Pollutants are accumulated in proportion to time, so an average concentration can be determined. This feature makes it possible to obtain data that are more representative of the contamination of the water body.

Similarly, as pollutants accumulate in the sampler over the duration of exposure, detection and quantification limits will be lowered. In this way, substances transiting at very low concentrations can be more easily detected ( ≃ng/L).

Deployment matrix :

  • Rivers
  • WWTP
  • Sea
  • Lac
  • Drinking water
  • Waste water