Our nightmare

Last year, Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu Province, China, suffered from serious tap water pollution caused by benzene leaking into the drinking water source. Although it happened in April, 2014, citizens in Lanzhou are still in the dark about the safety of their drinking water. If you look at the whole world, it is easy for you to find that the whole world is in a nightmare of water pollution. Water pollution accounts for 80% of all infectious diseases reported by WHO. World-wide around 1.1 billion people lack access to improved water sources. There is no doubt that millions of people care about the water quality and are eager to know whether their water is safe and available.

Our human practice

Last year we designed a novel microbial fuel cell (MFC) system and were able to detect the concentration of PNP (p-nitrophenol) in aqueous solution. So this year we decided to create a convenient and low-cost device to detect some contaminants in water such as heavy metal ions. At the beginning of our program, we carried out our human practice both in China and abroad as we needed to know the present situations and people’s attitudes to water pollution all over the world.

Human practice in China consists of questionnaires and public education. Outside China, we did the Internet survey by Twitter, microblog, WeChat and other approaches and got many useful data from 9 countries.

Questionnaires

Aiming at the difference between China and western countries, we designed two kinds of questionnaires including a Chinese questionnaire and an English questionnaire, which is basically similar (Chinese questionnaire , English questionnaire ). We totally acquired 369 questionnaire responses.

The survey in China was carried out both online and offline. We used an online survey website and collected 148 effective questionnaires. We also got 136 effective paper questionnaires in Lanzhou city. As to the English questionnaire, we put it on the surveymonkey website and promoted it by Twitter, WeChat and other media to get more data. Finally, we recycled 85 effective questionnaires from 6 different countries (Australia, Canada, USA, Japan, Portugal, Singapore) located in four continents. All of these countries belong to developed country.

We drew some interesting conclusions from all of the 369 questionnaires.

During the research, we tried to let the respondents estimate the heavy metal pollution level in the earth and choose some countries and places suffering from severe heavy metals contamination without providing them with any statistics. After collecting enough data, we compared and analyzed the questionnaire statistics we collected.

Fig 1 A map we painted based on the statistics of the questionnaires. The white spots on the map represent those places that are considered to be suffering heavy metal pollution in water.

Obviously, from the public perspective, severe heavy metal pollution usually occurs in industrial areas and comparable prosperous cities in the developing countries. Without a doubt, it is very easy to understand that the environment is sacrificed to get economic growth.

In fact, for most countries, when it comes to their growth from ‘developing’ to ‘developed’, with multiple factors including population growth, industry accumulation, imperfect industrial techniques along with climates and geography of their own, actually do have more and more severe heavy metal pollution.

We did the similar analysis of China according to data from Chinese questionnaires as well.

Fig 2 A map of China river basin and the red spots represent those places that are considered to be suffering heavy metal water pollution.

According to the Chinese residents, whatever the pollutant is, pollution seems always concentrate at the middle and downstream of a river. At the same time, the industrial center of China lies at the downstream of the Yangtze River and Yellow River, so these areas are believed to be the worst-hit by heavy metal pollution. However, taking the Yangtze River as an example, there are several polluted areas in the upstream which are in the same severe situation as the downstream.

Fig 3 Serious heavy metal pollution in water considered by respondents.

The data of this graph comes from our Chinese questionnaire as well. Most people regard mercury, lead, copper and chromium as the most serious heavy metal pollution. On the one hand, it may be an objective reflection of present situation in China. On the other hand, reports from different media in recent years might contribute to the variation of the data, because the reports about mercury , lead, copper and chromium contaminants were in the majority, which corresponds to our graph. But we still need to do some professional statistics when it comes to how serious it is about the heavy metal water pollution in China.

What’s more, the analysis of our questionnaire survey around the world verified the necessity of our idea and project.

Table 1 The statistics of questionnaire

Fig 3 Serious heavy metal pollution in water considered by respondents.
(There are totally 8 choice questions.)

There are three main conclusions

1. Water pollution is serious and of concern: More than 45% respondents both in China and western countries think they are contaminants in the local water and over 68% of them care about the water pollution. These results shows that it is high time to detect and treat the heavy metal pollution in water. And that is the goal and meaning of our project.

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2.Chemical detection and Biological detection are known by more people than physical methods.

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Fig 5b

Most people have heard of chemical detection, while more people are aware of biological detection in several developed countries outside China, which indicated with the development of society, people prefer convenient, environment friendly and cheap biological detection.

3. Although most people agree with using modified microbes to treat contamination, they are unsure how they can be used. With so many people, over 70% of the respondents, accepting biological treatment of heavy metal pollution in water, it is possible for us to promote our device to the public. Meanwhile, since there are still many who don’t know about biological treatment, it is a rather important thing for us to spread related knowledge about modified microbes for pollution treatment.

Public education

We also devised some interesting and educational activities. We showed our ideas about our detecting system ‘micro holmes’ to the public and handed out some booklets to help them know more about water health. There is no doubt that the highlight of our public education is field experimentation, which attracted a lot of people. The live demonstration experiment is easy but useful and interesting, and is a novel approach to public education in iGEM.

Here are more details about our public education.

On the first day of the May Day holiday, a sea of people visited the zoo. Our team, LZU-China, seized this opportunity to do our human practice, informing people of basic facts about water, which helps the citizens develop a healthy habit of using water. By the way, we also spread some information about how to detect pollutants in water and the basic knowledge of Microbial Fuel Cell.

1.Live demonstration experiment

Picture 1 The live demonstration experiment.

The live demonstration experiment was the most wonderful key link. It attracted lots of passersby especially kids. There were so many children and even adults who wanted to have a try to experience the glamour of science, particularly the experiment of a colorimetric method to measure the concentration of the iron ion. The live demonstration experiment achieved a great result that whoever joined in it highly praised our activity.

2.Propaganda and survey

We handed out many leaflets about water health to visitors and collected some information from interviews. We also presented our project to those who are interesting in it.

Picture 2 In the above photo, one of our teammates is surveying members of the public about their expectation of our project.

A Chinese version booklet about water pollution and water health.

An English version poster about our project.

Picture 3 A team photo at the public education activity.

Through this activity, we not only hoped to help citizens establish a proper awareness towards water protection but also the way they use water. So more people can get away from water pollution and use water safely. It was also our honor that so many visitors thought highly of our program and this public education.

All of the human practice encouraged us go further.