Abstract

Nor Antonina Abdullah¹, Noor Azhar Mohd Shazili² and Ahmad Shamsuddin Ahmad

An assessment on marine contamination due to heavy metals was conducted in the mangrove areas based on marine bivalves and sediments collected from Tok Bali, Kelantan. The sediments were collected at the intertidal zone during low tide. Six sampling stations were randomly chosen for sampling in the whole study area. The sediments collected were analyzed for sedimentological characteristics using particle size analyzer (PSA) for sediments <63 mm, organic carbon, using wet dichromate method and heavy metals using Inductive Couple Plasma-Mass Spectroscopy (ICP-MS). Results on the sedimentological characteristics revealed that the sediments ranged from fine sand (2.43Φ) to silt (6.97Φ), moderately sorted (0.66Φ) to poorly sorted (1.65Φ) and strongly negatively skewed (-0.06 Φ) to positively skewed (0.11Φ). Organic carbon contents ranged from 0.9% to 1.3%. For heavy metals in sediments, results revealed that the average concentrations for Cr is 83.8µg/g; 139.4µg/g for Mn; 11.5µg/g for Cu; 82.9µg/g for Zn; 45.1µg/g for Sr; 31.5µg/g for Ba and 35.1µg/g for Pb. For the bivalve on the other hand, Cr has an average concentrations of 2.1µg/g; 47.8µg/g for Mn; 4.7µg/g for Cu; 80.0µg/g for Zn; 34.4µg/g for Sr; 1.4µg/g for Ba and 1.6µg/g for Pb. Results from normalization revealed that the heavy metals were derived from natural source and no anthropogenic input was observed

Heavy metals; Sediments; Bivalaves; Mangroves; Malaysia

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