The peat moss Sphagnum palustre was cultivated in bioreactors in Reski’s laboratories in Freiburg and prepared for use in MOSSpheres. Over 30 experts at 5 universities and 5 SMEs in 5 EU countries (Spain, Italy, France, Ireland and Germany) joined forces in the MOSScope project funded by the EU’s “Eco-Innovation!” programme to try and improve this error-prone method and turn it into a marketable commodity. In short, it is impossible to obtain reliable measurement results. In addition, the moss continues to grow while the pollutants are being measured, and therefore moss quantities are constantly changing. The moss used is collected in the wild and, therefore, has an unknown pollutant history.
This knowledge has already been put to good use in measuring air pollution since the 1960s however, there has always been one major drawback. In addition, peat mosses have a particular surface structure that enables them to effectively take up and store water and hence also pollutants.
Moss is particularly suitable for such a purpose as it has no real roots and, therefore, takes up nutrients and pollutants from the air by way of rain rather than soil. As the name suggests, this involved using moss. The members of the consortium MOSSclone set out to develop an alternative system for monitoring air pollution. They are also extremely costly and have only been installed at a few sites.īiomonitoring is an alternative method that uses biological materials such as plants to bind pollutants or that analyses the plants’ response to pollutants. The disadvantage of such systems is that they need electric power and are not mobile. The EU has only approved certain technical measurement systems for measuring the quality of environmental air. Since 2008, EU countries have also been required to measure heavy metal concentrations. © BIOPRO/SchüsseleĬontinuous monitoring of environmental air quality and measurement of airborne pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and sulphur oxides that could endanger human health has been mandatory in the EU since 1996 and is aimed at enabling appropriate action to be taken when threshold values are exceeded. Professor Reski proudly presents a MOSSphere, developed by the European “MOSSclone” consortium.
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