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PROJECT'S INTEREST

• Heavy metals, environmental and health issues

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• Our team contacted a number of experts to think about what problems can be found in society with reference to nickel. This step led us to a feasible and useful project. We are thankful for the technic and scientific information to :
  – Michèle OTTMANN, associate professor, responsible of Biosecurity courses at the university Lyon I and virologist (P3 et P4)
  – Lydie NEMAUSAT, assignment manager at FRAPNA-Rhône, water treatment plant of Pierre Benite. [http://www.frapnarhone.org/ lydie.nemausat@frapna.org]
  – Adeline KISSANE, quality water manager in Grand Lyon.
  – Marc BOOGAERTS, health executive in dialysis center at Clinic of Tonkin, Villeurbanne.
  Our project regards the environmental, industrial, health, social and humanitarian aspects.

  
  
  

  Why are we struggling against heavy metals?
  It is well know that heavy metals (defined as natural metallic elements with a volume density below 5g/cm, like lead, zinc, cadmium or nickel) are naturally present in the water, the air and the ground in tiny concentrations (a few ppb). However human activities contribute to spread them in the environment (nickel is commonly used to make coins or orthodontic braces for example), leading to abnormally high concentrations in the ecosystems. Beyond their features, heavy metals aren’t biodegradable and accumulate themselves in life organisms, becoming more and more toxic.

  
  
  
  • Environmental issues:
    

    a) Curly’on enables to filter nickel for water purification plant.
    Nickel can damage nature, plants, algae, when rain includes high concentration of metal. To understand environmental issues at a city scale, our team went to visit a water treatment plant to know more about rules and controls of heavy metals in the water. Astonishingly, there is no control of heavy metals concentrations whereas these pollutants are absorbed on matter suspension and eliminated in sludge. So nickel is in the environment and can be found in the water we use.

    
    

    b) Curly’on gives the possibility to salvage and recycle nickel.
    Concerning recycling, nickel stocks don’t exceed sixty years. It is present in Australia, Russia, Canada, New Zealand, Cuba. 60% are used to create inox. There is necessity to protect stocks and to improve their utilization. Actually, nickel is recycled at 55%.
    

    c) Curly’on improves eating and drinking in food-processing and also in humanitarian context.
    What’s more, by carrying heavy metals in the food chain, water plays a key role in pollution and a serious challenge to eliminate heavy metals pollution. That’s why we chose to focus on that special issue. Our final goal is to respect the European norms (especially the article L330/43 from 5 December 1998) that states first that nickel concentrations must not go over 20 µg/L in drinkable water and secondly that 0% of modified DNA or proteins must be found in water. In humanitarian context, our project is really necessary to cleanse water.

    
    
    
• – Health issues:
  

  a) Nickel risks.
  In particular, nickel exposure, especially in industrial and occupational settings, can present significant health hazards. Firstly, allergy to nickel is something that grown to be more and more important recently, mainly due to the introduction of inexpensive jewelry where the underlying metal is comprised of nickel. Ten-to-twelve percent of the female population and six-percent of the male population are believed to experience an allergy to nickel, caused by the nickel salts that are formed by sweat in contact with the nickel. Secondly, nickel is one of many carcinogenic metals known to be an environmental and occupational pollutant. It has been connected with increased risk of lung cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurological deficits, developmental deficits in childhood, and high blood pressure. Finally, nickel has been identified as a toxin that severely damages reproductive health and can lead to infertility, miscarriage, birth defects, and nervous system defects. All in all, nickel is suspected, on the one hand, to severely disrupt enzyme action and regulation and, on the other hand, to contribute to a high amount of oxidative stress.

  
  

  b) Curly’on make renal dialysis better.
  We were very carefully about renal impairment and dialysis. In the past, intoxication problems exist on sickness people and there is still a risk for dysfunctional renal cases. We visit a dialysis center to learn about treatment and patient perception. Dialysis protocol requires a sterilized water, not to have a fever. There are regulations for dialysis center: once a month, physical chemistry analysis search for heavy metals in the system. During the last decades, machines for water distribution change inox pipes for pipes in PEX (cross-linked polyethylene). This evolution could restrict nickel propagation but our project make possible to respect regulations without replacing the system. Thus we limit the cost of substitution of the dialysis engine. Indeed, European pharmacopoeia about heavy metals includes a lot of problems because there is no complete list. In particular, nickel is never mentioned in rules. Additionally, the tests are not specifics. In this way, our project Curly’on can really improve pharmaceutical tests.

  
  
  

Are they some methods today to eliminate them ?
After scientific and technic monitoring, we drew to the conclusion that two main techniques are topical :
- Inverse osmosis that can be efficient to eliminate small concentrations of heavy metals. However it isn’t very profitable and, in aerobic conditions, metallic oxides can clog membranes. - Ionic resins that are able to retain heavy metals, which are divalent cations.

Nevertheless these methods remains expensive and in a way complicated to set up: thus our goal was to develop a cheaper alternative, that could be used by anyone: Curly’on can be located in a filter.

So how can our filter be used ?

First of all it tackles environmental concerns, making possible to depollute water from its heavy metals, for which no technical solution have been found yet.

Two main fields are especially targeted :

• The metalworking and chemical industries which throw back into water metals so that waste water contains 10 to 100 times more nickel than river water. Despite those effluents being transferred to water treatment plants and transformed into sewage sludge, the most of the metals particles are not eliminated. Considering that the sludge is then used for agriculture and farming, such pollution leads to risks of food contamination. Following this ideal, we visited water treatment and water purification plants to think about the possibility of using our system for depolluting water from the environment. It appeared that, despite heavy metals were more and more considering as environmental issues, no technique was developed to decontaminate water in case of pollution by heavy metals. Water plants often control heavy metal concentrations, however they are only able to stop pumping water when the rates are too high. However, they set out the argument that heavy metals pollution come mainly from the degradation of private pipes (in opposition to public pipes for which water plants are responsible), that are commonly made out of zinc or lead. That leads us to the second target...

  
  

• The household who drinks water that is potentially contaminated with heavy metals from pipes : to give an example, nowadays the cost to replace all lead canalizations in France is estimated to be 15 billion euros, which isn’t affordable for the owners. The idea we came up with was to screw our filter directly to the tap of private individuals.
  
  

Secondly, our filter can improve medical techniques such as dialysis. Indeed the water used often contains nickel due to the stainless steel tube in which it is carried. The risk is then to transfer the metal particles into the blood of patients.

But we mustn’t forget that water pollution by heavy metals is a real health issue all over the world : not only in our countries, since it sometimes happens for chemical or metalworking industries to have a leak in their purification circuits, but in developing countries too, where the access to the technological means to purify polluted water is sometimes limited. Considering this point, we met a responsible for humanitarian projects related with water, hygiene and sanitation. He seemed interested by our biofilter, insofar as it was a cheap method and that nothing had already been developed in poor countries to deal with heavy metals pollution. Moreover, he could easily imagine that people wouldn’t be as sceptic as in Europe regarding the fact that it’s a GMO product.

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