COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT MULTIELEMENT TECHNIQUES FOR ANALYSIS OF MOSSES USED AS BIOMONITORS

Mosses are used as biomonitors on a regular basis to study trends in t he atmospheric deposition of trace elements in Norway. In this paper t he analytical scheme used so far, based on a combination of instrument al neutron activation analysis and atomic absorption spectrometry (INA A/AAS) is compared with inductively coupled plasma emission spectromet ry (ICP-ES) and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). ICP-ES provided satisfactory data for nearly 20 elements, but detecti on limits were inadequate for some elements of importance. For ICP-MS quantitative data were obtained for 33 elements including the heavy me tals of key interest in air pollution studies. In most cases where com parison was possible the ICP-MS data compared favourably with data obt ained by the reference scheme or by ICP-ES. On the basis of this study ICP-MS is considered to be an equivalent alternative to INAA/AAS in m ultielement studies using mosses as biomonitors. In addition ICP-MS of fers some promise for the study of elements such as Be, Ga, Mo, Te, Tl , and Bi, for which very little information exists regarding their beh aviour as air pollutants.