Jakarta Bay Paracetamol Contamination; Researcher Reveals Possible Sources

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - An oceanography research center researcher of the National Research Agency (BRIN), Zainal Arifin, in a virtual event on Monday gave his views about the alleged sources of the paracetamol contamination in Jakarta’s Angke Bay and Ancol. 

Zainal is one of the researchers involved in the joint Indonesia-Britain research that broke the news about the contamination.

“We have not held the research to find the source [of the contamination], but theoretically ‘there are many roads to Rome,’ which means there are many potential sources of [the substance] before entering Angke and Ancol,” he said on October 4. 

According to the researcher, who obtained his doctoral degree at Simon Fraser University Canada, his research team agreed to conclude that 60-80 percent of the coastal contamination hailed from the land areas of Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi.

“It can be caused by people’s lifestyle, carelessly disposing of expired medicines, or because of overconsumption,” he added.

However, he noted that other potential sources could come from hospitals or pharmaceutical firms due to the failure of waste management system and the waste from producing drugs that entered rivers and eventually reached coastal areas. 

His team’s research gathered samples from four different locations such as Angke, Ancol, Tanjung Priok, and Cilincing. They also gathered them from one location in the northern part of Central Java’s coastal area on Eretan Beach, but the highest concentration of paracetamol was found at Angke (610 ng/L) and Ancol (420 ng/L) .

Another BRIN oceanography researcher involved in the study of paracetamol contamination, Wulan Koagouw, echoed Arifin, saying the findings were in the early stages and further research was required to uncover the sources. 

Read: Seawater in Angke, Ancol COntaminated with Paracetamol, Study Finds

MOH KHORY ALFARIZI