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Protecting water resources from harmful and costly chemical, biological and radiological pollution is a high priority on the global environmental agenda. In collaboration with several national and multilateral agencies, the IAEA has been carrying out specialized scientific studies that are proving critical in plans to prevent irreversible damage to Egypt's Lake Manzala and Europe's Black Sea.
Lake Manzala is a 50 km long coastal lagoon in Egypt's Nile Delta, located Northwest of Cairo and bordered on its eastern side by the Suez Canal and the city of Port Said. The lake is a depository for large quantities of untreated city sewage and contaminants, which ultimately flow into the Mediterranean. Left uncontrolled, this pollution threatens the health and livelihood of millions of inhabitants across a densely populated region.
A pre-project study, funded by UNDP, to measure contamination in Lake Manzala was carried out with the active participation of the IAEA Marine Environment Laboratory (MEL) in Monaco. This initiative, undertaken jointly with scientists from Egypt's National Research Centre in Cairo, involved a wide sampling of water, sediment, and fish in major areas of contamination. MEL's participation centred on analyzing chemical contaminants such as chlorinated and petroleum hydrocarbons and trace elements, a task that has required specialized equipment and expertise.
Findings from the data collected enabled a comprehensive environmental impact assessment of the lake. Moreover the study has made a critical contribution toward development of an artificial wetland that would prevent pollutants from Cairo from seeping through the Nile delta into the Mediterranean. This upcoming Global Environment Facility project (GEF) will cost over US$ 11 million and will demonstrate the value of engineered wetlands as a cost-effective, ecologically sound method for trapping sediments and pollutants from municipal, industrial and agricultural sources.
In many other locations around the world, MEL is using isotope based analytical techniques in to understand both freshwater and marine pollution problems. These techniques are very helpful in identifying contaminants, whether radioactive or not, tracing their complex pathways in the environment and investigating their biological effects.
They are now being extensively employed in assembling information on pollution of the Black Sea. Its extended river network, or catchment area, comprises some 300 rivers, extending as far as Munich to the west, Minsk to the north, and Ankara to the south. Some of Europe's largest tributaries, such as the Danube, Dniester and Dnieper, flow into the Black Sea. The larger geographical area is home to some 160 million people.
Little more than 30 years ago, the Black Sea harboured a teeming animal and plant life, which included dolphins and monk seals. Its waters served as the breeding grounds for a vast array of fish, a vital source of protein for the six countries sharing its shores (Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey and the Ukraine). Hundreds of thousands of eager summertime vacationers flocked to its beaches to relax, swim, and cool off.
But today, the Black Sea ranks as one of the world's most heavily polluted water bodies, with its life-supporting capabilities very seriously impaired. Across the area, beaches are regularly cordoned off due to unsanitary conditions. Commercial fishing has all but disappeared, and the tourism sector is in crisis.
Governments of the six adjacent countries have launched concerted actions aimed at stemming pollution. Responding to this strong regional commitment, international aid organizations have became involved. In 1993, the GEF started a series of large-scale projects aimed at saving the Black Sea, however none of these sought to directly address radioactive pollution, a major concern, or to apply radiochemical tracer techniques, which the Agency's MEL has several decades of experience. Following an inter-agency meeting between GEF, UNEP, the World Bank and others, the IAEA was invited to add its expertise.
MEL is now collaborating with local Black Sea scientific institutions including Turkey's Çekmece Nuclear Research and Training Centre, Ukraine's Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas at Sevastopol, Romania's Environmental Radioactivity Laboratory and Bulgaria's National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology. Technical co-operation is helping build local scientific capacity and quality control, with the goal of assembling reliable and representative baseline data, and ultimately enabling recipient institutions to undertake pollution monitoring activities on their own.
Within two to three years, the four countries currently participating in the project will be able to analyze marine samples for all the significant radionuclides, and to apply radiotracer techniques to study the behaviour of non-radioactive pollutants. For the first time, they will have in their own hands the tools to assess the ecological destiny of the once bountiful Black Sea. With such knowledge in hand, the burden shifts to the region's decision-makers, business enterprises and the wider public to translate this scientific knowledge into positive environmental action.
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