Pine needles as passive sampler of air pollution. Standard operating procedure of their analysis and possible use for bioassay.

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are a group of highly lipophilic compounds, which are widely spread in the environment. They are conventionally monitored using high volume air sampling technique. An alternative to active sampling represent passive air samplers (SPMD, PUF). However, the cheapest and most readily available tool for estimation of atmospheric POP levels at remote and poorly accessible locations (the high mountains) remains biota. Especially needles were identified to be a good matrix for passive air sampling. New development in the environmental chemistry is a combination of passive sampling and bioassays which provide information on possible risks for living organisms. What makes the interpretation of such data difficult is a fact that each of published studies used different plant material (species, needle age), method of sampling, extraction and clean-up. In addition, some of the authors reported a POP content in dry or wet needle weight whiles the others in lipid weight. Such data prevent us from comparison of results from various studies. Harmonization of the methodology for sampling, sample processing, and data reporting seems to be crucial. The aim of this study was to develop a standard operational procedure for application of needles as a tool for assessment of the atmospheric pollution including bioassays estimating toxicity of the samples and possible risks for living organisms.