Geoenvironmental Studies of Contamination of Bottom Sediments of Oman Gulf, United Arab Emirates

Heavy metals and grain size were determined in 23 bottom samples from Gulf of Oman, UAE. Analyses of grain size revealed that most of the samples in the studied areas lie between muddy sand to gravelly sand texture. The most standard deviations in the areas reflect moderately, well sorted grain size. The high percentages sediments of the four areas lie in saltation population rather than traction and suspension population this support the results that the sediments are mixed from different environments such as fluvial, beach and shallow marine. Studying the characteristic feature for all chromatographic pattern of four samples reflect typical to weathered crude oil. The concentrations of copper, zinc, lead, iron, manganese and vanadium vary between (9.00, 17.15 , 11.62, 19812.8, 281.1 and 19.40 µg/g) respectively which are being within the permission levels. This mean that no elements derived from pollutant sources. Nickel and cadmium concentration (497.4 and 5.57 µg/g) respectively of the studied samples are shown to be high level. The contaminations level were found due to petrogenic origin and their sources are either weathered or highly weathered crude oils and or used lubricating oil. Their detection gives an indication of recent and continuous petroleum inputs.