Aquatic passive sampling of a short-term thiacloprid pulse with the Chemcatcher:: Impact of biofouling and use of a diffusion-limiting membrane on the sampling rate

We examined the performance of the Chemcatcher (University Portsmouth, UK) in two different configurations when used for the aquatic passive sampling of a 1-day pulse contamination with thiacloprid under field-relevant conditions. The configuration without diffusion-limiting membrane led to biofouling of the Empore disk receiving phase resulting in a fourfold reduction in analyte uptake compared to unfouled passive samplers. The sampling rate for the configuration with diffusion-limiting polyethersulfone membrane was also much lower than in a long-term exposure scenario, although no biofouling occurred. Both configurations of the Chemcatcher exhibited high variation in analyte Uptake with LIP to 100% RSD. Short-term contamination events may be underestimated in passive sampling when the receiving phase is bioflouled or a diffusion-limiting membrane is employed. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.