Malaysian Journal of Analytical Sciences Vol 21 No 1 (2017): 52 - 59

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/mjas-2017-2101-07

 

 

 

THE COMMON PITFALL OF USING ENRICHMENT FACTOR IN ASSESSING SOIL HEAVY METAL POLLUTION  

 

 (Kepincangan Penggunaan Faktor Pengkayaan dalam Menilai Pencemaran Logam Berat di dalam Tanah)

 

Seng-Chee Poh* and Norhayati Mohd Tahir

 

School of Marine and Environmental Sciences,

Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, 21030 Kuala Terengganu, Terengganu, Malaysia

 

*Corresponding author: poh@umt.edu.my

 

 

Received: 5 November 2016; Accepted: 8 December 2016

 

 

Abstract

A soil pollution assessment of heavy metal Zn, Cu, Cr, Cd, Ni and Pb was carried out in Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia. A total of 245 surface soil samples were sampled and have been subjected to a total digestion and analyzed by inductive couple plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES).  The contamination of the soils was assessed on the basis of enrichment factors (EFs). Large discrepancies in results of enrichment factor associated with the choices of reference elements in the EFs’ calculation have been observed. Our study show that the choice of four commonly-used reference elements (Al, Fe, Ca and Mn) in enrichment calculation could easily alter the enrichment factor values of element of interest by more than 4-folds although the results were supposed to be similar regardless of which reference elements being used. This could lead to serious misinterpretation of soil quality assessment result.

Keywords:  soil quality assessment, Malaysia soil, elemental analysis, acid digestion

 

Abstrak

Satu penilaian pencemaran logam berat Zn, Cu, Cr, Cd, Ni dan Pb dalam tanah telah dijalankan di Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia. Sebanyak 245 sampel tanah telah diambil, diproses berdasarkan kaedah penghadaman asid dan kepekatan logam berat telah dianalisa dengan menggunakan spektrofotometer pancaran plasma gandingan aruhan (ICP-OES). Pencemaran tanah telah dinilai menggunakan pendekatan faktor pengkayaan. Kajian ini menunjukan nilai-nilai faktor pengkayaan boleh berbeza dengan ketara apabila pengiraan faktor pengkayaan dirujukkan kepada elemen rujukan yang berbeza. Kajian kami mendapati nilai-nilai faktor pengkayaan boleh berbeza sebanyak empat kali ganda apabila pengiraan faktor pengkayaan merujuk kepada Al, Fe, Ca dan Mn dan perbezaan nilai-nilai faktor pengkayaan boleh membawa wujudnya kesilapan dalam mentafsir kualiti tanah yang dikaji.

 

Kata kunci:  kajian kualiti tanah, tanah Malaysia, analisa unsur, penghadaman asid

 

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