Plastic debris floating on surface water has now become an environmental issues concerning its abundance and fate. Generally, plastic debris that are fragmented into less than 5 mm in size is known as microplastics (MP). To date, discovery on the occurrence and impacts of MP in marine environments have been reported by many studies. However, less investigation has been carried out in freshwater environments. The occurrence of MP in Malaysia is also unknown. Thus, the present study has characterised the abundance of MP between Skudai and Tebrau River. The quantification of MP levels in these channels are pertinent since both rivers are listed among polluted rivers in Malaysia with high amount of rubbish. Surface sediments were collected with a box corer and MP were extracted via density separation. The inspection of particles was carried out under microscope and were categorized based on shape, colour, and size. Preliminary results showed that the concentration of MP was much higher in Tebrau than of Skudai River. The study demonstrates that the abundance of MPs in both urban rivers may possibly be affected by weathering breakdown of large plastic materials since these locations are well-known for fishing and industrial areas.
This study investigates the interactions between chromium (Cr) and microplastic under controlled laboratory conditions using low density polyethylene microbeads as plastic particles. Chromium was added to suspensions of in artificial seawater to investigate heavy metal adsorption on microbeads surface. Polyethylene microbeads proved to have affinity in providing surface area for chromium. It served as an effective sorption surface thus lowering amounts of chromium in seawater through adsorption process. The best percentage of heavy metals adsorbed to microbeads and adsorption capacity was 1.7 µg/g and 8.5 % at 1.0 µg/mL respectively. The maximum adsorption was monitored for 180 hours. Kinetic study was performed and fitted well in pseudo-first-order kinetic. In term of isotherm, dataset was in good agreement with both Langmuir and Freundlich with correlation at 0.977 and 0.9606 respectively. Adsorption of chromium to polyethylene microbeads had important implications for the potential role of microplastics, in this case microbeadschromium contaminated act as a quantified link in aquatic food webs.
Pineapple is a commodity and economic fruit with a high market potential worldwide. Almost 60 % of the fresh pineapple, such as peels, pulp, crowns and leaves, are agricultural waste. It is noteworthy that the waste has a high concentration of crude fibre, proteins, ascorbic acid, sugars and moisture content. The pineapple waste utilisation in animal feed has recently drawn the attention of many investigators to enhance growth performance and concomitantly reduce environmental pollution. Its inclusion in animal feed varies according to the livestock, such as feed block, pelleted or directly used as a roughage source for ruminants. The pineapple waste is also fermented to enrich the nutrient content of poultry feed. To date, the inclusion of pineapple waste in animal feed is optimistic only not for livestock but also for farmed fish. Indeed, it is an ideal strategy to improve the feed supply to the farm. This paper aims to overview the source, nutritional composition, and application of pineapple waste in animal feed. The recent findings on its effect on animal growth performance, nutrition and disease control are discussed comprehensively and summarised. The review also covers its benefits, potential impacts on sustainable farming and future perspectives.
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