New Passive Air Sampler Employs World's First Cloned Moss

Under European air quality directive 2008/50/EC, member states are required to monitor, assess, manage and report on national air quality. Traditionally, active sampling instrumentation, such as particulate matter samplers, have been the favoured approach to assessing ambient air quality. However, this can be a costly and time consuming method of data collection.

As a result of the EU FP7 project MOSSCLONE, a new cost-effective passive air sampler has been developed called ‘mossphere’. It employs the world’s first cloned moss which has been cultivated on a large scale to produce a highly pure homogenous material.

Terrestrial mosses display an excellent efficiency in loading both particulate and gaseous determinants of heavy metals, inorganic, organic and radioactive pollutants. The mossphere was designed to exploit this efficiency. The mossphere marks the next generation in passive sampling technology and is leading the way when it comes to low cost, precise passive sampling of particulate matter, metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. This product will be launched onto the market over the coming months by T.E Laboratories, an innovative Irish SME specialising in environmental analysis. Details of mossphere can be found at www.tellab.ie.