I’m updating an impact assessment for a 5-acre infill site next to a tidally influenced creek and weighing whether passive samplers (PEs/SPMDs or POCIS) provide better temporal coverage of dissolved PAHs than monthly grabs. If you’ve deployed them in urban runoff, did the added resolution change your mitigation plan — like bioretention sizing, source control priorities, or timing of construction BMPs?
I’d go PE with PRCs for 3–4 weeks spanning a spring–neap cycle; on a 5‑acre tidal infill we saw “first‑flush” PAH pulses that monthly grabs missed and prioritized source control over upsizing bioretention. Caveat: pair the deployment with one storm‑triggered grab to ground‑truth uptake.
We ran PEs with PRCs on a 5‑acre tidal infill and caught dissolved PAH spikes on ebb low tides that the “monthly grabs” missed — so we left bioretention sizing alone and shifted budget to source control and a vacuum‑sweep schedule, . If you do it, skip POCIS for PAHs and hang the PE cage mid‑water with a debris guard to cut resuspension bias; USGS has a clear primer: https://pubs.usgs.gov/tm/1D4/. @OP what window are you aiming for?