Increasing attention given to heavy metals as components of the pollutant load in aquatic ecosystems makes it necessary to find reliable biological indicators. Fundamental investigations into the effect of heavy metals on organisms are therefore required. The aquatic moss Fontinalis antipyretica was chosen as an indicator organism to optimize the indication of heavy metal loads at the physiological and biochemical levels. Investigations into the distribution of the heavy metals Cd, Cu, Pb and Zn showed higher concentrations and less biological dispersion in older parts of the plants than in young shoot tips. In-spite of the considerable fluctuations it was possible to establish a correlation between concentrations of the element zinc in the medium and in the organism when water samples were examined parallel to plant samples. The correlation between various elements found in aquatic moss, above all copper and lead, made it possible to draw conclusions about the accumulation properties of Fontinalis antipyretica with respect to various elements.

The water moss Fontinalis antipyretica has been investigated to estimate heavy metal pollution in the river Elbe (middle Germany). Procedures of plant separation, digestion as well as an analytical method for ICP-MS analyses have been evaluated. Reproducibility and accuracy have been demonstrated on BCR 61 (NIST) reference material and results have been compared with AAS and AES data. The distribution of heavy metals in different plant segments of indigenous material has been analyzed. Exposition of plant material in the river Elbe have shown no correlation between the heavy metal content in plants and that of water samples. Cd and Zn concentrations found in the plant material are significantly enriched relatively to control samples. To understand the sophisticated ‘real system’ experiments have been carried out under laboratory conditions to investigate induced sulphur-rich compounds in the presence of heavy metals using HPLC including on-line derivatization.