The Water Quality Index: Effect of Antifouling Paint

Maintaining or improving water quality is very important to be concerned by both communities and authorities especially on the marine environment which inhabited by the marine life. However, the development of technology keeps increasing, which mostly leads to the pollutions towards the environment including water pollution. One of the pollutants sourcing from the maritime activities is antifouling paint. This may relate to Sungai Manjung’s water quality in Perak as there are several maritime activities nearby such as port operations, vessel maintenance and others. The aim of this study was to identify the water quality index and to compare the trend of corrosion defects of aloe vera on capsaicin antifouling additive and standard antifouling paints towards water quality. In this paper, 17 samples of steel plates were submerged at Sungai Manjung for 12 weeks. The initial water parameters, which are pH value, dissolved oxygen (DO), salinity and total dissolved solid (TDS), were being taken. The weight, water parameters, surface condition of samples are recorded. An observation on the conditions of weather and tide level were recorded. A total of 65 data for water parameters collected and analyzed using the procedure of the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME WQI). The weight of the samples was analyzed by using simple regression. The results found that the water quality index for Sungai Manjung is poor after the sample were submerged. On the other hand, the sample steel plate with natural additive gives lower trend of corrosion defects compared to the streel plate with antifouling paint only.