| Summary: | Heavy metal toxicity in the environment could have potential effects on human health. Raising concerns over the potential causes of various industries, domestic and agriculture activities could lead to their wide distribution in the environment. Heavy metals are introduced into aquatic systems, such as streams, lakes, rivers, and groundwater, from a variety of human activities such as mining, industrial processes that used of metal, or substances that contain metal pollutants. This research aims to determine the heavy metals content of copper (Cu), iron (Fe), chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni), and lead (Pb) in wastewater plant effluent and lake water by using Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry (AAS). Prior to the analysis, several approaches on the method validation were performed, which are precision, recovery, linearity, limit of detection (LOD), and limit of quantitation (LOQ). The water samples were collected from the wastewater plant effluent and lake in Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Kuala Pilah, Negeri Sembilan Malaysia. The water samples were prepared using the wet digestion method by acidifying them with concentrated nitric acid (HNO3) and perchloric acid (HClO4) prior to decomposing the organic substances in the samples. The correlation coefficients, R2, obtained were higher than 0.9958. The LOD for Cu, Fe, Cr, Ni, and Pb were found to be 0.0142, 0.0113, 0.0641, 0.0423, and 0.1970 ppm, respectively. Meanwhile, the LOQ is in the range of 0.0344 to 0.5970 ppm. Both wastewater plant effluent and lake water have recoveries (%R) ranging from 80.25% to 107.84%, indicating high accuracy in determining heavy metals. The results obtained showed that wastewater plants have a higher concentration of heavy metals compared to lake water. Overall, this study will create awareness and provide knowledge about the importance of controlling the crucial discharge of hazardous heavy metals. © 2022
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