Investigation of PTE Levels in Plants at Former Mine Site

Contamination of Potential Toxic Element (PTE) in plants at former mine site has caused an interest in the scientific approach of their remediation since the PTE may cause a lot of health problems to human itself. However, there is lack of complete catalogues of PTE levels at former mine site for classification. PTE levels in plant may differ according to different locations and the concentration will be different depending to the parts of plant. Due to that, this research is investigate the PTE levels in plant at former site in Perak Malaysia, according to each part plant which are root, stem and leaf. The sampling was taken at two former mine sites with different condition. Location 1 is active with agriculture activity while location2 has been abandoned for many year and currently has been museum galley. In the field of study, common elements in the PTE are heavy metals, and in this scope of fieldwork
which involve former mine site, the heavy metals will be referred as PTE. The main PTE commonly found at former mine site are Lead (Pb) and Zinc (Zn). However, Cadmium (Cd), Nickel (Ni), Copper (Cu), Arsenic (As), Chromium (Cr) and others also can be found at former mine site. The types of PTE investigated in this research
are Pb, Ni and Cu. The experiment conducted is using hydrochloric acid (HC1) and nitric acid (HNO3). The samples were analyzed by using Atomic Absorption
Spectrometry (AAS). The result has shown that all the plants taken from former mine studied are having higher concentration of PTE. The concentration of Pb, Ni and Cu
are higher than Permissible Exposure Limits in plant which are 2mg/kg, lOmg/kg and lOmg/kg respectively.