Assessment of heavy metal in sediment and its effect on fish

Abstract

This study was to evaluate the concentration of heavy metal in sediment and to determine bioaccumulation of sediment contaminated and its effect on fish. Puyu fish (Anabas Testudineus) has been selected as the indicator and was exposed to heavy metal at a concentration of iron in 300g of sediment for 10 weeks period with the different number of fish in each aquarium (3 fish, 6 fish and 9 fish). Contaminated sediment was taken from Kuala Perlis River and was placed with different weights (300g, 700g and 1000g) for each aquarium as a control to the experiment. The concentration of heavy metal iron has been analyzed by using DR2800 and the results given in mg/g dry weight. The concentration of heavy metals in sediments was decreased by from 72.7 mg/g to 66.5 mg/g and the concentration of the water was significantly increased from 0.33 mg/L to 2.3 mg/L for the sediment control experiments. Accumulation of heavy metal in gills and liver is the highest within the exposed period which is the reading are 7.1 mg/g and 5.9 mg/g. Relationship of sediment and water on fish was calculated by using transfer factor (TF) that consider the concentration of heavy metals in fish tissue and concentration of heavy metal in sediment and water. Result shows that water had higher transfer factor (TF) compared to sediments. Results from this study demonstrated the need for an ecosystem approach towards sustainable management of river for the control of aquatic pollution which represent a health risk to people consuming aquatic resources that contaminated by heavy metal.