Passive Sampling

Passive sampling enables the monitoring of contaminants (micropollutants or biotoxins) in water (surface water, groundwater, coastal water…) for a short (at least 7 days) to long period (with an average field deployment of one month) for which no power, maintenance and supervision is required. An average of the concentration of collected contaminants is measured in the laboratory.

Advantages of Passive samplers :

• Can generate a time-weighted average (TWA) concentration of the contaminants in water
• Deployable in harsh conditions
• No a priori preparation or supervision
• Detection of punctual contaminations
• Higher enrichment of contaminants

Passive samplers based on SPE disks like Chemcatcher are designed to provide TWA concentration of polar or non polar organic compounds as well as metals during the sampling period. This passive sampler is very simple of use to extract the contaminants.

• The Polar Organic Chemical Integrative Sampler (POCIS) is designed to provide the time weighted average (TWA) concentration of hydrophilic organic chemicals (pesticides, drug residues, Glyphosate & AMPA, EDCs…) during the sampling period. POCIS can be supplied with or without Performance Reference Compound (PRC). Historically developed for polar compounds, some applications have been developped for non polar compounds such as Perfluorinated compounds (PFAS) thanks to the right combination of sorbent/membranes.
• Silicone rubbers are the convenient tools for the uptake of non-polar contaminants such as PAHs or PCBs.
• Solid phase adsorption toxin tracking (SPATT) is a new monitoring tool that simulates the biotoxin contamination of filter feeding bivalves.

AFFINISEP provides a complete range of sorbents for the retention of specific molecules or a family of contaminant for Pharmaceutical, Pesticides, Herbicides, Endocrine disruptors, perfluorinated compounds, Biotoxins, metals… as well as all necessary accessories such as holder, canister, manifold, ….

Some passive samplers such as disks passive samplers and POCIS can uptake similar compounds depending on the good choice of the sorbent/membrane.