Influence of Vehicular Emission on Road Dust in Urban and Rural Roads

The increasing amount of motored vehicles in Malaysia is believed to be a contributor to the drastic increment of heavy metals contamination in the environment especially at high traffic density area. This critical domestic environmental issue need for more detailed information to have an understanding on the problem and consequently triggers the proper pollution prevention to be undertaken to avoid any adverse effect to human’s health. Lead (Pb), Copper (Cu), Nickel (Ni), Chromium (Cr) and Zinc (Zn) are elements that many researchers claims as the major heavy metals contributed by vehicular emissions. In order to investigate the influence of vehicular emissions towards the level of heavy metals concentration in the environment, road dust samples from specified urban and rural locations are collected which represent high and low traffic density areas respectively. The concentration of Pb, Zn, Cu, Cr and Ni from the road dust samples will be analyzed using Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy (AAS). The experimental results shows that as the number of motored vehicles increases on the road, the concentrations of Zn and Cr in the road dust also increase. Thus, it shows that the vehicular emission could be a direct contributor and responsible to the emission of heavy metals to environment particularly Zn and Cr. Ni contents in road dust are too low to be interpreted and analyzed by AAS system owing to its high mobility property. Meanwhile, Pb concentration in road dust shows that the vehicular emission is not a sole contributor to the Pb level in road dust as it might be originated from various sources such as industrial and agricultural activities.