Air quality for metals and sulfur in Shanghai, China, determined with moss bags

Metal content in mosses from the Metropolitan Area of the Toluca Valley: a comparative study between inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) and total reflection X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (TXRF)

“…Lower concentrations as the ones reported here have been found in the case of Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Zn and Pb in Italy and Czech Republic [27][28][29]. However, our results are similar in the case of Cu, Mn, Pb and Zn than those measured in urban areas from Campania Region, Italy, Shanghai, China and Turkey [28,30,31]. The polluted areas in Turkey and Serbia show Fe, Pb, Zn and Cr concentrations two or three times lower and Cu concentrations eight times higher than this study [32,33].…”

Seasonal comparison of moss bag technique against vertical snow samples for monitoring atmospheric pollution

“…The lack of a cuticle enhances uptake from the atmosphere while the lack of true roots limits the direct influence of substrate (Szczepaniak and Biziuk, 2003). Active monitoring by moss bags is spatially representative particularly in highly polluted areas experiencing the absence of native mosses (passive monitoring) (Cao et al, 2009;Saitanis et al, 2013;Vuković et al, 2015). In this study, moss bag material was acid-washed, which releases cation exchange sites, evens out the initial element levels, and increases the bioconcentration capacity of moss (Ares et al, 2012).…”

Active moss biomonitoring for extensive screening of urban air pollution: Magnetic and chemical analyses

“…Active moss biomonitoring, predominantly using the "moss bag technique", has been applied in air quality assessments of urban microenvironments (e.g., Cao et al, 2009;Adamo et al, 2011), where naturally grown bioindicators of air pollution, such as mosses and lichens, are not usually available. However, only a few active biomonitoring surveys have been performed on a large scale with extensive sampling grids over urban environments, e.g., across Girona and Salt, Spain (Rivera et al, 2011), Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain (Ares et al, 2011), and Warsaw, Poland (Orliński, 2002;Dmuchowski and Bytnerowicz, 2009).…”