الملخص:
A study of metal concentrations in total suspended solids (TSS) in Engineering and Built
Environment Lake Faculty – UKM, Selangor, Peninsular Malaysia was conducted in January,
April, July, and October 2019. Water samples were collected using acid washed, distilled water
rinsed polyethylene bottles and triplicates water samples were pooled together then immediately
filtered using 0.45μm membrane filters (APHA,1992). The dried samples were put in test tubes
and digested with 5 ml of a mixture of concentrated tri- acid HNO3:HClO4:H2SO4 (10:4:1) at
100 ºC in a hot plate for 2 hrs. Six metals i.e. cadmium, chromium, lead, nickel, zinc, and copper
were determined by Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICP –MS), Perkin Elmer
Elan,Model 9000. The results show that copper had the highest concentration (9.55 μg /g), while
cadmium had the lowest concentration (0.91 μg /g) in Total Suspended Solids samples. For
Cu,Zn,Cr,Ni,Pb and Cd the highest and lowest concentrations were (9.55- 3.68, 3.79-3.78, 3.73-
2.31, 2.60-1.59, 3.19-0.29 and 0.91-0.05) respectively. Furthermore, the average for
Cu,Zn,Cr,Ni,Pb and Cd in Total suspended solids were (6.60),(3.79),(3.02),(2.08),(1.73) and
(0.48) respectively. The accumulation of heavy metals in total suspended solids depends on the
factors like metal content in water, absorption properties of the plankton species, and to the
metal of sediment (Elmaci et al., 2007). In the present study, the amounts of metals
concentrations depends upon the deposition of dead plankton, sedimentation of the suspended
particles having trace metals content.