As I stated in my previous articles, water pollution is one of the biggest environmental issues that Turkey face, right now. For the past two articles, I have explained in detail where there was pollution, what has been done so far by the government or civilians and what should be done. It?s my belief that now is the time to inform you all about what we, as the protectors of the future, have done so far to prevent this specific problem.
Before I start I must inform you all that the project that I?m about to tell you all is one that I am not a part of. This is a project done 15 students in our school, 3 teachers as advisors and a professor from İTU (Istanbul Technical University).
The first step the project group made was to search and find a habitation that is or might be polluted. The project group came up with Lake Manyas as their goal. Lake Manyas is located in western Turkey, in a city called Bal?kesir. This lake is also known as ?Bird Paradise? inasmuch as it is a very common place for immigrating birds to rest for some time. Every year, thousands of birds can be seen in Lake Manyas at different times of the year. However, this paradise has been having issues for the past years. Aside from the lowering level of water that is caused by the global warming, the lake has been contaminated by agricultural chemicals. There is also a mine waste site that is nearby the lake which seems to be the main reason of pollution in the lake.
Being aware of this, the project team visited the lake last April. They run some tests on the water while taking 8 samples of water which would be analyzed in İTU by professionals to determine what is in the water. As this is a very delicate examination and takes some time, the results were received only two months ago. The analysis showed the amounts of heavy metals (Zn, Cu, Fe etc.) and some other elements (Mg, Ca etc.) by using the ppb (parts per billion) measurement (1 ppb = 1.10^-9 kg/L). According to the drinking water quality standards set by the EU, there must be at most 10 ppb/L of Nickel (Ni) in a water source in order to be called ?clean?. According to the sample?s analysis, there is an average of 58.05 ppb/L in the lake which is way more than it should. Also, it was founded that there was there was an average of 21.875 ppb/L of Arsenic (As) in the lake water while the parameter set by both WHO(World Health Organization) and EU is 10 ppb/L. This is also another proof of the lake?s contamination. Last but not least, the amount of Mercury (Hg) inside the lake water is 1,3 ppb/L. Although, WHO considers this amount to be not much, the EU?s parameter for clean water for Mercury is 1 ppb/L. In other words, Lake Manyas is polluted by means of three elements: Nickel, Arsenic and Mercury.
The good news is the fact that there are only three elements that are above the parameters. Elements such as Iron, Copper and Zinc are below the parameters. However, while this results make us relieved the fact stands that these three elements are in the water more than they should have meaning the mine waste site?s wastes maybe the cause of this event. Therefore, the project group believes that the cause of this event should be researched further in detail. The project group is aware of the fact that their job has only began. They are in fact making plans to visit Lake Manyas as I write these lines. Their next goal, I believe, is to compare these analysis of samples taken in spring to the other ones that they are planning to take this year in another time of the year(different than the spring) to see if the numbers differ and if they do ask the question ?why??.