Water Resource Management Urgency in Traditional Salt Producing Ponds at Jeneponto District, South Sulawesi – Indonesia Akbar Tahir, Paulina Taba, Shinta Werorilangi and Muh Farid Samawi
Universitas Hasanuddin
Abstract
Plastic pollution has universally known accumulated in all compartments and accelerating threat to the sustainability of our planet. A field survey to examine the occurrence of microplastics in ancient sea water evaporation technology of ponds at Pallengu, Jeneponto District of South Sulawesi Province was conducted in July 2018. From this traditional sea salt producing ponds, samples of water, sediment and freshly produced salts were collected. Samples of water and sediments (16 samples respectively) were collected from points at adjacent sea, primary, secondary and tertiary canals, and sedimentation/warming ponds. Salts (12 samples) were only collected at salt producing ponds. Of the 12 samples of salt observed, we found 7 samples were positively contaminated with 29 particles of microplastics (MPs) predominated by line and fragment forms (with 58.3% of total contamination levels). Total contamination level of MPs on sediments were accounted for 50%, where 41 MPs particles were observed. From 16 water samples collected, there are 31 MPs discovered from 11 water samples observed (total contamination 68.75%). Interestingly, sampling spots at sedimentation/warming pools were found to be the locations with highest occurrence of MPs in both water and sediment samples. Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy (FT-IR) analysis has revealed 3 kinds of polymers, i.e. EVA (41.7%), PE (33.3%) and PP (25%). From statistical analysis there was no significant difference found on MPs occurrence from kinds of samples collected, although there was a trend of correlation between MPs count in both water and sediments. With microplastics abundance of 100 particles/kg salt, we presumed that continuous consumption by people will end up with possible accumulation of potentially absorbed of various toxic chemical pollutants which present in sea water as salt raw materials. The need for robust and practical strategy in water quality management for reduction of microplastics contamination in consumed salts would be a must.
Keywords: microplastics, sea salt, water management, Jeneponto, Indonesia
If your conference is listed in our system, please put our logo somewhere in your website.
Simply copy-paste the HTML code below to your website (ask your web admin):