You are here:
Advancing the Use of Passive Sampling in Risk Assessment and Management of Sediments Contaminated with Hydrophobic Organic Chemicals: Results of an International Ex Situ Passive Sampling Interlaboratory Comparison
Citation:
Jonker, M., S. van der Heijden, D. Adelman, J. Apell, R. Burgess, Y. Choi, L. Fernandez, G. Flavetta, U. Ghosh, P. Gschwend, S. Hale, M. Jalalizadeh, M. Khairy, M. Lampi, W. Lao, R. Lohmann, M. Lydy, K. Maruya, S. Nutile, A. Oen, M. Rakowska, D. Reible, T. Rusina, F. Smedes, AND Y. Wu. Advancing the Use of Passive Sampling in Risk Assessment and Management of Sediments Contaminated with Hydrophobic Organic Chemicals: Results of an International Ex Situ Passive Sampling Interlaboratory Comparison. ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY. American Chemical Society, Washington, DC, 52(6):3574-3582, (2018).
Impact/Purpose:
Passive sampling is a technology for collecting the freely dissolved concentrations of hydrophobic organic contaminants (e.g., PCBs, DDTs) in the water column and sediment interstitial waters of aquatic systems. This concentration is a good surrogate for the bioavailable concentration of the contaminant(s) and can be used in risk assessments as a measure of exposure. Several laboratories are currently using passive sampling globally but very few comparisons have been performed to evaluate the inter-laboratory variability associated with the passive sampling process. This work presents the results of an international interlaboratory comparison on passive sampling in sediments. The main objectives were to assess the state of the science in passively sampling sediments, identify sources of variability, provide recommendations and practical guidance for standardized passive sampling, and advance the use of passive sampling in regulatory decision making by increasing confidence in the use of the technique. The study was performed by a consortium of 11 laboratoriesand included experiments with 14 passive sampling formats on three sediments for 25 target chemicals (PAHs and PCBs). It is concluded that passive sampling, irrespective of the specific method used, is compatible for implementation in risk assessment of contaminated sediments, provided that method setup and performance, as well as chemical analyses are quality-controlled.
Description:
This work presents the results of an international interlaboratory comparison on ex situ passive sampling in sediments.
The main objectives were to map the state of the science in passively sampling sediments, identify sources of variability, provide recommendations and practical guidance for standardized passive sampling, and advance the use of passive sampling in regulatory decision making by increasing confidence in the use of the technique. The study was performed by a consortium of 11 laboratoriesand included experiments with 14 passive sampling formats on 3
sediments for 25 target chemicals (PAHs and PCBs). The resulting overall interlaboratory variability was large (a factor of ∼10), but standardization of methods halved this variability. The remaining variability was primarily due to factors not related to passive sampling itself, i.e., sediment heterogeneity and analytical chemistry. Excluding the latter source of variability, by performing all analyses in one laboratory, showed that passive sampling results can have a high precision and a very low inter method variability (
