Passive sampling is increasingly applied for monitoring neutral hydrophobic compounds (HOC) in various environmental media like water, sediment, air and also soft biota tissue. Passive samplers for HOC are often constructed from permeable polymers like silicone and polyethylene (PE), while also SPMD are often applied. Their HOC uptake can be converted to freely dissolved or equivalent lipid-based concentrations using appropriate partition coefficients with or without the use of kinetic uptake models to adjust for non-equilibrium. To facilitate such conversions for seventy HOC partition coefficients are derived by combining polymer-water for Altesil™ silicone and PE, with new and earlier published polymer-polymer, polymer-lipid partition coefficients. Derived SSP silicone-water, lipid-water (Klip/w), and SPMD-water (Kspmd/w) partition coefficients demonstrate good agreement with literature data, except for Kspmd/w. For SPMD, this work demonstrates a linear Kspmd/w - Kow relationship (R2 = 0.99) in contrast to the parabolic Kspmd/w - Kow relationship utilized in the USGS "SPMD Water Concentrations Calculator". Following a thorough evaluation of this Calculator it is recommended that in combination with revised Kspmd/w, a radical different model approach should be used for obtaining accurate water concentrations from passive sampling with SPMD.

Masaryk University Faculty of Science Research Centre for Toxic Compounds in the Environment Kamenice 753 5 625 00 Brno Czech Republic

References provided by Crossref.org

Ex situ determination of freely dissolved concentrations of hydrophobic organic chemicals in sediments and soils: basis for interpreting toxicity and assessing bioavailability, risks and remediation necessity