Meng-Chuan Ong

By Ong Meng Chuan and Kamaruzzaman Yunus

Metals pollution has drawn worldwide attention due to increase of anthropogenic contaminants to the coastal area, especially wetlands area. Metals are indestructible and have toxic effects on living organisms. Sediment can act as an indicator of metals pollution due to the ability of the sediment that can trap metals through complex physical and chemical process. Therefore, they are always used as geo-marker for identifying the possible source of metals pollution. Besides that, wetlands such as mangrove have a diverse diversity of organisms that provide proteins to local communities such as clam, oyster, crab, and fishes. Therefore, it is important for us to know the levels of metals in the sediment and those organisms that we consume nowadays that live at the mangrove area. Such findings can provide important information on the seafood safety level and potential impact especially to humans via consumption according to the provisional tolerable weekly intake and daily intake.

Part of the book: Wetlands Management

By Ong Meng Chuan and Kamaruzzaman Yunus

Pollution caused by metal elements has drawn increasing attention worldwide due to the increase of anthropogenic contaminants to the marine ecosystems. Pollution of the natural environment by metals is a serious problem because these elements are indestructible and most of them have toxic effects on living organisms, when they exceed a certain concentration. Sediments are widely used as geo-marker for monitoring and identifying the possible sources since sediment can act as sink for the pollutants. Most metals are bound in fine-grain fraction because of its high surface area-to-grain size ratio where they have a greater biological availability compared to those in larger fraction. Lying in the second trophic level in the aquatic ecosystem, shellfish species have long been known to accumulate both essential and non-essential metals. Many researchers have reported the potentiality of using mollusks, especially mussel and oyster species, as bioindicators or biomarkers for monitoring the metal contamination of the aquatic system.

Part of the book: Monitoring of Marine Pollution