Surface water quality is an important environmental factor affecting both humans and other living things.
This present study is purposely to provide a baseline information on physicochemical parameters and
metals concentration from surface water of Kenyir Lake and their water quality status. Determination of
metals concentration was carried out using ICP-MS. The mean physicochemical parameters were 31.14°C
(Temp), 16.29mg/L (TDS), 27.79µS/cm (COND), 4.75mg/L (DO), 7.03 (pH), 1.33NTU (TUR), 0.96mg/L
(BOD), 6.48mg/L (COD), 0.11mg/L (AN), 2.17mg/L (TSS) and 227.10mV (ORP) while the mean
concentration of metals (µg/L) Al 23.0845, As 0.2983, B 4.1711, Ba 5.0655, Ca 2033.4024, Cu 1.7407, Fe
43.7747, K 916.9054, Mg 456.7255, Mn 4.7387, Ni 0.3346, Se 0.5032, V 0.1428 and Zn 1.6796 respectively.
The results revealed that physicochemical parameters and metals concentration at all sampling stations
near Kenyir Lake are within Class I and Class II of Malaysia National Water Quality Standard (NWQS)
except for dissolved oxygen (DO) that was classified into Class III and Class IV due to high activities of
microorganisms that uses up a great amount of oxygen to carry out their metabolizing activities as well as
degradation of organic matters. Furthermore, most metals are significantly correlated to each other (p˂0.05)
which may derive from a common source of metals except for Al and Cu, As and Fe, Ba and Ca, Ca and
Cu, Ca and Se, Ca and Zn, Cu and Fe, Cu and Mn, Cu and Ni, Cu and Se, Cu and Zn, Fe and Ni, Fe and
Se, Fe and Zn, Mn and Zn and V and Zn respectively. Therefore, data from the present study will be useful
as baseline data for future reference.