The current state-of-the-art of passive sampling and/or extraction methods for long-term monitoring of pollutants in different environmental compartments is discussed in this review. Passive dosimeters that have been successfully used to monitor organic and inorganic contaminants in air, water, sediments, and soil are presented. The application of new approaches to the determination of pollutants at the sampling stage is discussed. The main milestones in the development of passive techniques for sampling and/or extraction of analytes, and in biomonitors used in environmental analysis, are summarized in this review. Passive samplers and biomonitors are compared.

The principles of passive dosimetry, which has been known for over 100 years, are finding an ever increasing use in analytical practice and are being used as a convenient technique for isolation and enrichment of analytes from various environmental media. Due to its simplicity, a variety of designs, as well as the possibility of using a number of different final determination techniques, passive dosimetry has been applied in the analysis of organic and inorganic air pollutants, both in the outdoor and the indoor and workplace atmospheres, as well as in the monitoring of water and soil pollution. This paper is an attempt to review the designs of existing passive samplers, the media used to trap analytes and the techniques used for the release of the trapped analytes and their final determination.

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Passive dosimetry -known for over a hundred yearsis still a useful tool in monitoring air pollutants. In this work, permeation passive samplers were used to determine indoor air quality in 22 apartments located in the Gdansk area in the northern part of Poland. The results obtained by the passive sampling technique were compared to those obtained by dynamic sampling. Attempts were also made to identify indoor sources of pollution and assess the effect of the infiltration of outdoor pollutants on indoor air quality.