Abstract
Populations in the Langat River Basin, Malaysia, frequently experience water supply disruption due to the shutdown of water treatment plants (WTPs) mainly from the chemical pollution as well as point and non-point sources of pollution. Therefore, this study investigated the aluminium (Al), arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), and lead (Pb) concentrations in the drinking water supply chain at the basin because of its prolonged persistence and toxic characteristics in the aquatic environment. Three replicates of water samples were collected from the river, outlets of WTPs, household tap and filtered water, respectively, in 2015, for analysis by Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry. Higher concentration of these metals was found in household tap water than in the treated water at the WTPs; however, the concentration of these metals at the four stages of the drinking water supply chain conformed to the drinking water quality standard set by the World Health Organization. The Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests also found that metal concentration removal significantly varied among the eight WTPs as well as the five types of household water filtration systems. With regards to the investigated household filtered water, the distilled filtration system was found to be more effective in removing metal concentration because of better management. Therefore, a two-layer water filtration system could be introduced in the Langat River Basin to obtain safe drinking water supply at the household level.
Highlights
The Langat River is one of the 189 major river basins in Malaysia and has unique characteristics [1,2]
The high concentration of Al in the Langat River has crossed the highest limit of drinking water quality standard 200 μg/L set by the Ministry of Health Malaysia [29] and the World Health Organization [41]
The higher dissolved concentration of Cr was investigated at the upstream hilly forest area such as Pangsoon point 0.60 ± 0.56 μg/L, Lolo point 0.66 ± 0.36 μg/L, and Serai point 0.60 ± 0.04 μg/L than the downstream mostly because of weathering of serpentinite rock-derived oxisols along the central belt of peninsular Malaysia [46]
Summary
The Langat River is one of the 189 major river basins in Malaysia and has unique characteristics [1,2]. The pollution of this transboundary river, both from point and non-point sources, is a serious concern because of pollution management by different states; state governments are the owners of river and land in Malaysia [1,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. Inadequate collaboration and partnership in respect to pollution management of Langat River has been reported among the agencies [12,13]. The nine water treatment plants (WTPs) based in the Langat River Basin have experienced several shutdown incidents because of pollution of the river, both from point and non-point sources, including chemical pollution [1,7,14,15]. Al 46.28 ± 32.71—380 μg/L [4,23,24]; As 4—201.11 μg/L [4,23,25,26,27]; Cd 0.11 ± 0.12—35.56 μg/L [16,23,26,28]; Cr 0.67 ± 0.90—70 μg/L [4,16,23,24,25], and Pb
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