干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Application of mosses and lichens as biomonitors, analyzed by nuclear and related techniques, has been extensively used to provide information about air quality. These plants possess efficient accumulation capacity for many air pollutants from atmospheric deposition. Studying air pollution with plants, instead of the commercial air filters is a simple, low-cost, effective method to estimate levels of air pollutants and their impact on humans and animals. A steady global increase of the use of active biomonitoring, whereby biomonitors are collected from relatively pristine habitats and transplanted to different environments, is due to scarcity or total absence of native biomonitors in certain environments e. g. large cities with heavy technogenic load and industrial regions as well as in arid areas. Biomonitoring of trace elements resulting from road traffic, specifically from tunnels, has not yet received adequate attention in the research world. In our pilot study in the Western Cape, moss and lichen species were deployed inside Huguenot tunnel and the results are presented in this work. Samples were analysed by the multi-elemental Inductively-Coupled Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS). Moreover, samples will later be subjected to the non-destructive instrumental epithermal neutron activation analysis (ENAA), thus facilitating an intercomparison of results obtained by ENAA and ICP-MS.