An Artificial Turf-Based Surrogate Surface Collector for the Direct Measurement of Atmospheric Mercury Dry Deposition

This paper describes the development of a new artificial turf surrogate surface (ATSS) sampler for use in the measurement of mercury (Hg) dry deposition. In contrast to many existing surrogate surface designs, the ATSS utilizes a three-dimensional deposition surface that may more closely mimic the physical structure of many natural surfaces than traditional flat surrogate surface designs (water, filter, greased Mylar film). The ATSS has been designed to overcome several complicating factors that can impact the integrity of samples with other direct measurement approaches by providing a passive system which can be deployed for both short and extended periods of time (days to weeks), and is not contaminated by precipitation and/or invalidated by strong winds. Performance characteristics including collocated precision, in-field procedural and laboratory blanks were evaluated. The results of these performance evaluations included a mean collocated precision of 9%, low blanks (0.8 ng), high extraction efficiency (97%–103%), and a quantitative matrix spike recovery (100%).