Assessment of Tarmat contamination and its chemical characterization along the west coast of Qatar, Arabian Gulf

Tarmat/Oil residue (hereafter ‘TM’) is one of the serious threats to the marine ecosystem due to their toxicity, persistence and bioaccumulation problems. To assess the level of TM contamination and to determine the primary differences in the chemical composition, a sampling campaign was conducted in 12 beaches along the west coast of Qatar. TM contamination ranged from 0 to 104 gm-1 with an average value of 9.25 gm-1. Moreover, all the TM samples were found to be highly weathered, blackish and asphalt-like material. Though the current TM pollution level is thirty-fold lesser than those found during 1993 to 1997, the contamination pattern was similar (i.e. northwestern part was highly contaminated). The distribution of TM along the Qatar coast is as follows: Low tide> high tide> berm line. Attenuated Total Reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy was used to examine the bulk chemical characteristics of the TMs. These bulk chemical characteristics have revealed several features unique to different types of TM samples.