Comparison of Spider Web and Moss Bag Biomonitoring to Detect Sources of Airborne Trace Elements
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Comparison of Spider Web and Moss Bag Biomonitoring to Detect Sources of Airborne Trace Elements Neele van Laaten & Dirk Merten & Wolf von Tümpling & Thorsten Schäfer & Michael Pirrung
Received: 24 April 2020 / Accepted: 22 September 2020 / Published online: 30 September 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Atmospheric particulate matter has become a major issue in urban areas from both a health and an environmental perspective. In this context, biomonitoring methods are a potential complement to classical monitoring methods like impactor samplers, being spatially limited due to higher costs. Monitoring using spider webs is compared with the more common moss bag technique in this study, focusing on mass fractions and ratios of elements and the applicability for source identification. Spider webs and moss bags with Hypnum cupressiforme were sampled at the same 15 locations with different types of traffic in the city of Jena, Germany. In the samples, mass fractions of 35 elements, mainly trace metals, were determined using inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopy (ICPOES) and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) after aqua regia digestion. Significantly Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-020-04881-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
higher mass fractions in spider webs than in moss bags were found, even after a much shorter exposure period, and could not be ascribed completely to a diluting effect by the biological material in the samples. Different mechanisms of particle retention by the two materials are therefore assumed. More significant correlations between elements have been found for the spider web dataset. Those patterns allow for an identification of different sources of particulate matter (e.g. geogenic dust, brake wear), while correlations between elements in the moss bags show a rather general anthropogenic influence. Therefore, it is recommended to use spider webs for the short-term detection of local sources while moss bag biomonitoring is a good tool to show a broader, long-term anthropogenic influence. Keywords Biomonitoring . Spider webs . Moss bags . Urban particulate matter . Heavy metals
1 Introduction
: D. Merten : T. Schäfer : M. Pirrung
N. van Laaten Institute of Geosciences, Applied Geology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Burgweg 11, 07749 Jena, Germany N. van Laaten (*) International Max Planck Research School for Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Hans-Knöll-Straße 10, 07745 Jena, Germany e-mail: [email protected] W. von Tümpling Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Brückstraße 3a, 39114 Magdeburg, Germany
Particulate matter (PM) in the atmosphere is regarded as one of the major environmental and health issues worldwide. This is of special importance in urban areas where people are exposed to enhanced levels of PM (Furusjö et al. 2007; Landrigan et al. 2018). The exposure to dust part
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