Halfway between the gravel airstrip where Joel Wickre landed
for his internship in Nicaragua and the university that was
to house him, the pickup truck broke down. He and his companions
made the rest of the trip to the town of Siuna on foot. Reliable
transportation can't be taken for granted in this remote and
rugged region of Nicaragua; neither can clean water.
Wickre, a Dartmouth senior, is working on a pilot project funded
by the Center for Environmental Health Sciences and the Tucker
Foundation’s Cross Cultural Service Initiative to study
and document suspected contamination of drinking water and soil
in this mountain town of 18,000 people. A six-hour drive from
the Atlantic coast — twelve hours from the capital city
of Managua —Siuna has a high indigenous population, 90
percent unemployment and the legacy of pollution from a defunct
gold mine.
The people of Siuna make their living by growing corn, beans
and fruit, and raising cows. Some pan for gold in the abandoned
mine sites, or from hand-dug pits in the ground. In the middle
of the town, near the market and several neighborhoods, lies
a lagoon — an abandoned mine pit that has filled with
water in the decade since the mine ceased operating. The lagoon
empties into a river that is a source of water for bathing and
washing clothes. Called El Cianuro (the Cyanide), the river
is aptly named.
Cyanide and other toxins often contaminate former mine sites
as a result of the mining process. Chemicals such as cyanide
are used in the process of extracting elemental gold from ore.
In addition, mining — in this case, gold — brings
other metals up to the surface, along with the one desired.
Mine tailings, the mud left after the gold ore has been extracted,
fill a valley in the region. Scientists believe it is likely
that soil throughout the area contains also arsenic and mercury,
besides cyanide.
When
a team of Dartmouth faculty and students coordinated by Dartmouth’s
Tucker Foundation first visited Siuna in December 2001 to offer
educational resources and medical care, they found that the
water from shallow wells and streams often teems with parasites
and bacteria. Infections from unclean water are a chronic problem.
Scientists speculate that toxic metals from the mine may also
contaminate the water, which could have tremendous health implications
for the town’s residents. Arsenic, for example, has been
linked to various forms of cancer, and mercury affects the nervous
system. The Tucker Foundation trip in December established that
clean water was the largest concern in the area.
"People know the water is terrible," says Wickre,
but with few medical facilities and very little money, it has
been very difficult to document health problems and find any
correlation between these problems and the pollution from the
mine. Additionally, the tight squeezing of the national budget
mandated by the World Bank to facilitate loan repayment has
caused the privatization of many national service providers,
including those providing water. The private companies that
now provide services such as water only provide to towns that
can pay for the service, which Siuna cannot. So the people of
Siuna have neither a clean alternative nor documentation of
their problem.
With mentoring from epidemiology researchers Margaret Karagas
Ph.D, Angeline Andrew Ph.D., and Madeline Dalton Ph.D., and
chemist Stefan Stürup Ph.D, all from Dartmouth's Center
for Environmental Health Sciences, Joel Wickre developed a study
to document effects from the mine on the local water supply
through a Center internship. The Center is funding the scientific
study, including sampling and analysis, and the Tucker Foundation
provided funding for the trip. The study is investigating whether
metal contamination is a health threat and whether arsenic and
cyanide concentrations in Siuna are above safe levels
 |
Siuna,
Nicaragua |
In
April 2002, Joel and fellow undergraduate researcher Katie Martin,
also a senior, carried out the field component of the project.
With students from the university in Siuna, they interviewed
mothers of selected families living in the town about their
water sources and purification, food consumption, and lifestyle
— all in Spanish. They then collected hair and toenail
samples from each family member, water and dust samples from
each house and recorded the location of the house using a Global
Positioning System. The team plans to map the area, correlating
areas of contamination with the data they have collected. They
also took samples of all the water sources used by the town
to investigate potential clean water sources. Back at Dartmouth,
Joel is analyzing the data with the help of Stefan Stürup,
director of Dartmouth's Trace Element Analysis Lab, and other
faculty. Dartmouth undergraduate Kelly Miller has joined the
project and is helping to analyze the samples. The students
plan to write up their research results and return to Siuna
to make presentations to local organizations and leaders.
The project dovetails with plans by Dartmouth’s Tuck School
of Business to visit Siuna to discuss a long-term plan for Dartmouth's
involvement with the community. With local organizations, the
Tuck group will consider the feasibility of a public-private
partnership that would pair private funding with the local government,
non-profit and non-governmental organizations. This could facilitate
the establishment of clinics, micro-loans for women, and other
social services that could pave the way for improved health
conditions and sustainable development.
