Sampling Barneveld

At an industrial business park in the Barneveld area in the middle of the Netherlands the analists of Eurofins Analytico decided to contribute to the global Eurofins Microplastics proficiency test. The business park is located along the highway A1, the national road N805 and in the immediate vicinity of Barneveld Noord train station. Logistics and transportation are the main areas of activity. Due to this specific location, we expect a relative high contribution of styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR), one of the most frequent used rubbers for car tires.
Particle deposition form the air on the roof of the laboratory was sampled by placing the containers on a table on the roof above our IT department on the first floor, which was the only place clear of laboratory ventilation exhausts. Typically Dutch was the fact that it directly started to rain the moment we started sampling. Average temperature was 20 degrees during daytime and 15 during night.
Tinted glass jars, equipped with a funnel of a given diameter was used to collect not only rainwater, but also settled dust. The dust is flushed inside the jars naturally by rainfall or by daily flushing the funnels with filtered Millipore water.