Air monitoring of persistent organic pollutants in the Great Lakes: IADN vs. AEOLOS

Abstract

When designing a monitoring campaign, one has to consider many factors in the decision to perform a long-term synoptic monitoring program or a short-term intensive study. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. This paper compares and contrasts the information obtained from two studies conducted on the Laurentian Great Lakes. One, the Integrated Atmospheric Deposition Network (IADN), is a long-term synoptic monitoring study and the other, the Atmospheric Exchange Over Lakes and Oceans (AEOLOS), was a short-term intensive study. The advantages of long-term synoptic monitoring programs are providing greater spatial information, the relative influence of long and short-range transport on the regional background, gross loadings representative of the majority of each lake and long-term temporal trends. Short-term intensive studies provide more information on the processes governing sources, transport and deposition, such as the urban/industrial influence on adjacent large water bodies, specific sources to an urban/industrial area and short-term fluctuations in concentrations due to meteorology, source strength and photochemical reactions. Using information provided by both the IADN and AEOLOS studies, areas of urban influence are predicted for each of the five Great Lakes.

Current Challenges in Air Sampling of Semivolatile Organic Contaminants: Sampling Artifacts and Their Influence on Data Comparability

“…There has never been an agreed mandate to establish standardized procedures within and between SVOC networks and there is a lack of quality standard operating procedures for SVOC sampling. While some studies have assessed comparability between samplers or sampling networks, − efforts never went beyond these to address the potential implications. Most current discussion focuses on the problems related to spatial distributions, as well as analytical quality assurance and quality control (e.g., interlaboratory or inter-network comparisons ,,,, ), but little attention is given to sampling artifacts or spatial intercomparability.…”

“…While some studies have assessed comparability between samplers or sampling networks, − efforts never went beyond these to address the potential implications. Most current discussion focuses on the problems related to spatial distributions, as well as analytical quality assurance and quality control (e.g., interlaboratory or inter-network comparisons ,,,, ), but little attention is given to sampling artifacts or spatial intercomparability. Herein, we review and discuss influences on the most frequently used SVOC air sampling methods/techniques in both established networks and case studies and analyze how they impact measurements and thus data comparability.…”

A Knowledge-Based Approach to Environmental Biomonitoring

“…Concerns over issues such as biodiversity loss, atmospheric pollution, changes in water quality and quantity, land use change, sustainable development and climate change and its impacts have highlighted the need for high quality, longterm monitoring programmes to interpret environmental trends and inform policy making (Urquhart et al, 1998;Oldfield and Dearing, 2003;Simcik, 2005). In practice, controlling (anthropogenic) pollutants is a very complex problem: sources and emissions have to be identified, analytical methods have to be evaluated, loads and levels have to be computed or measured, risks have to be assessed, critical emissions have to be controlled, and economical aspects have to be integrated (Caughlan and Oakley, 2001), especially in large, not easily accessible and remote areas.…”

“…Biomonitoring programs can be considered as valuable supplements to standard pollution monitoring and are expected to contribute vastly to (a) increase the between-grid reliability of measurements when interpolation is performed, especially in the case of local peak valleys that are not identified by smooth interpolation (Aboal et al, 2005;Simcik, 2005), and (b) assessing the bio-impact of pollution (Bargagli, 1998;Gaio-Oliveira et al, 2004;Irving and Moncrieff, 2004;Martín-Díaz et al, 2005), which is quite significant for ecosystem and human health. The use of living organisms as environmental gauzes also bear other advantages that, although minor for information retrieval, they are valuable otherwise, as public sensitisation to environmental conservation, realized by the implementation of volunteers either at the local level or through the national/international ecology networks.…”