"Clean water is a ressource which humanity has to protect and take care of. There is no life without water." You cannot see how contaminated water is if you just have a quick look at it. Heavy metal particles, chemical salts and microplastic particles - invisible to the naked eye. But the consequences of having these dangerous particles in tap water are bad. They get into all the organisms that drink water and at the end of the food chain into the human body where they can increase the risk of deadly diseases like cancer. In particular microplastic particles don't just vanish, they just get smaller and smaller by friction. Unfortunately, they can be found everywhere around the world even at places where human being have never been before. The project aims at conveying the dangers of water pollution to youths and forces the participants to think about possible ways how to protect our environment, expecially our water. 28 students who attend grade 10 in Northern Germany and Southern Sweden take water and soil samples in order to analyse them in a laboratory. They want to find out how many particles of chemical salts like nitrates, phosphates and microplastic particles you can find in the rivers "Oste" and "Nissan" and the Northern Sea. Furthermore, the students want to find out where politicians set the limits for all of the particles in the water. They learn what can be done to prevent letting more of these dangerous particles into the water. The output is a longitudinal study that can be used in Science to convey how polluted water in our environment is and what can be done against it.
"Clean water is a ressource which humanity has to protect and take care of. There is no life without water." You cannot see how contaminated water is if you just have a quick look at it. Heavy metal particles, chemical salts and other bad particles - invisible to the naked eye. But the consequences of having these dangerous particles in water are bad. They get into all the organisms that drink water and at the end of the food chain into the human body where they can increase the risk of deadly diseases like cancer. Unfortunately, pollution can be found in a lot of rivers around the world even at places where human being have never been before. The project aimed at conveying the dangers of water pollution to youths and motivated the participants to think about possible ways how to protect our environment, expecially our water. Students who attended grade 10 in Northern Germany and Southern Sweden took water samples in order to analyse them in a laboratory. They wanted to find out how many particles of chemical salts like nitrates, phosphates or metal like Aluminium you can find in their rivers like the "Oste" and "Nissan". Furthermore, the students wanted to find out where politicians set the limits for all of the particles in the water. They learnt what can be done to prevent letting more of these dangerous particles into the water. The output can be used in Science to convey how polluted water in our environment is and what can be done against it.