Natural and anthropogenic trace-metal input into the coastal and estuarine sediments of the straits of Malacca

Abstract

One of the concerns of local management authority in Malaysia is the problem of metal pollution in the coastal waters. Approximately 44% of toxic and hazardous wastes in Peninsular Malaysia was contributed by the metal finishing industries. However, available data and publications are very limited and patchy. Most of the studies that have been conducted were on metal contents in fish and shellfish with less than a handful on metal contents in the environment. With regard to metal contents in the coastal sediments around Malaysia, all the values that have been documented are total concentration of individual metal. Although this kind of information is useful, it has its limitation, and in some cases it may lead to erroneous conclusions. This is because particulate metals from natural and anthropogenic sources accumulate together in the sediment. In order to determine the level of metal pollution in an area we do need to isolate the two metal proportions and this can pose problems because sedimentary metal load can vary by several orders of magnitude, depending on the mineralogy and grain-size distribution of the area. Thus, in order to properly interpret the status of metal pollution in an area, a normalization procedure is recommendedmore » so that we will be able to compensate for natural variability of the metals in the sediment, which would then enable us to detect and quantify any anthropogenic metal contribution to the system. In this study, natural and anthropogenic trace metal input into the Straits of Malacca was estimated based on normalization procedures using aluminum as the reference material since it was shown to work for several metals in the area. 14 refs., 2 figs., 2 tabs.« less