Team:USP SaoCarlos-Brazil/Human Practices
HUMAN PRACTICES
TAILINGS DAM DISASTER
In the first half of 2018, when the iGEM USP São Carlos - Brazil team was forming, we spent several months presenting project proposals that we could undertake in the competition. During this process, we have always been concerned with trying to find a motivation that all members would identify with it, so that we could work hard on a project we trust and would really like to apply to solve a problem in our country. The team's focus has always been on environmental issues.
The dam rupture of Mariana in the state of Minas Gerais (MG) resulted in 19 deaths, environmental and socio-economic problems in 39 municipalities caused by the spill of 39.2 million cubic meters of mining tailings that reached the Gualaxo do Norte river, in Mariana. These tailings flowed into the Doce River and continued into the Atlantic Ocean, impacting about 680 km of water bodies in the watershed.[1]
About 200 families lost their homes and about 2,200 hectares of rural properties were flooded, prevented from producing due to the presence of heavy metals from the mining tailings in the mud.
In addition, at the beginning of 2019, there was a second dam rupture, this time in Brumadinho in Minas Gerais (MG), in which 12 million cubic meters killed 249 people and left 21 missings. Manure sludge hit the Paraopeba river with heavy metals such as mercury, cadmium, and lead, as well as iron, silica and water from mining.
Given this, we were sure what would be the motivation of our project: try to solve the problems arising from these disruptions. This is because our goal has always been to represent Brazil, and through science try to make it a better country.
Based on this motivation, we structured our project to build a biological filter that would reduce the concentration of mercury in water, however, the idea is that our circuit would be applied to other metals in the future, exchanging the mercury-binding Biobrick for another. Our focus was to try to treat water for reuse so that people who depended on rivers that were contaminated by the disaster would not be at risk of mercury bioaccumulation from contact with water. As the main use would be for residents, we were concerned with designing a filter that was easy to use and maintain, cost-effective and above all safe. Because of this, both our genetic circuit and the physical filter model chosen were largely shaped by the application we wanted to achieve.
In the case of the genetic circuit used in this project, we chose a metal-linked protein that had already been used by another iGEM team (Peking 2010), and added a protein that induces biofilm formation to our circuit, so that we could ensure that our bacteria could survive in the community longer, which would increase the life of the filter and prevent them from loose in the water. In addition, we added a cellulose-binding tag (cellulose is one of the main components of our biofilm matrix) and a secretion signal in the metal collecting protein, so that this protein would get trapped in the biofilm matrix, which would decrease mercury entry into the bacteria, also extending filter life.
For the structure of our filter, we decided to use green coconut fiber as a substrate for bacterial biofilm, because besides being an abundant residue in Brazil, it is very cheap, has a large percentage of cellulose in its constitution and there are several studies showing its applicability as a filter, even to reduce the concentration of some metals in water. This is extremely interesting because besides being another support for anchoring our protein, we would be making an improvement on a material that is already naturally filtering.
Still on our physical filter, we made sure to make it easy to assemble and maintain, so that the user himself could perform the process operation and change filter components. In addition, we added a UV light at the end of the filtering steps, so that it was possible to ensure the safety of people using the water after treatment, as this step would ensure the death of any bacteria that might have come loose from our biofilter.
In addition to the project based on synthetic biology techniques, our concern was also to better understand how this disaster occurred, what damage was done to the local population and how we could minimally assist them. So, part of our Humanitarian Practices was directed to the disclosure about the psychological and social problems caused mainly by the breach of the Fundão dam, in Mariana - MG.
Thus, part of our team made a trip to Mariana - MG with the objective of interviewing the municipal civil guard so that we could get more information about what were the security measures taken before and after the disaster, and interviewing affected people of the disaster so that we could get a sense of how they were harmed and the damage dimension that they suffered in the psychological and social spheres.
We were accompanied by the tour guide Eduardo Rodrigues who put us in touch with the interviewees. In addition, Eduardo guided us to the districts of Paracatu de Baixo and Bento Rodrigues so that we could closely observe the environmental damage caused by the dam rupture.
With the permission of the interviewees to use the Image and Audio provided by the concession term prepared based on the term present in the iGEM 2019 handbook and using the information and materials we obtained, we produced a documentary with the main purpose of portraying the interviewees' experience during and after the disaster.
In addition, this documentary plays an important role in publicizing the disaster, raising awareness of the impacts that the disruption has had on the environment and the population, and highlighting the need to improve monitoring and enforcement of mining ventures so that it can be avoided disasters of this kind.
Finally, this documentary also served to draw the attention of more people and institutions to the damage done to Mariana's population.
Here is the link to watch the documentary in high quality.
Travel Diary
to the county of Mariana - MG
As part of our Human Practices, part of our team made a trip to the municipality of Mariana - Minas Gerais (MG). In this trip, we talked with affected residents, civil guard and visited two districts that were affected by the dam rupture. To record this trip we recorded a documentary and the recorded people gave in to the use of images.
Due to the unique experience that part of our team gained during the Mariana trip, we found it important to share in more detail how the trip took place and how it further motivated us to try to repair the affected population and the environment in some way.
Day 1 - September 3, 2019
The city of Mariana-MG is located about 700km away from the municipality of São Carlos-SP, where our team lives. On the morning of September 3, three members of our team (Giane Ferreira, Giancarlo de Souza and Maria Julia Marques) traveled with a friend of our team, Yuri Asnis, to the city of Ouro Preto-MG. The route was traveled by car, lasting more than 10h.
The trip team settled in the Fraternity Maternidade of Ouro Preto-MG, being received by Matheus Marrega, former resident of São Carlos who graduated in Ouro Preto.
Every day we traveled from Ouro Preto to Mariana, covering a distance of about 15Km, so that we could meet the tour guide Eduardo Rodrigues and conduct interviews and trips to the districts hit by the 2015 disaster.
Day 2 - September 4, 2019
In the morning we went to a family house that lived in Ponte da Gama district and currently lives in the city of Mariana - MG. We talked to Mirella, who at the time of the dam breach was 17 years old and was in school in a nearby district that was not hit.
She told us that neither she nor her family knew about the dam, and when they knew the mud was coming home. Mirella told us that it took a while to get in touch with her family. After the accident, they were islanded for approximately two weeks in the district as the accesses had been damaged. Today, Mirella and her family are struggling with varying degrees of depression and anxiety over the disaster and struggling struggle to get the broken dam company to rebuild a home for her family and other affected residents.
Mirella also informed us that in addition to the trauma caused by the disaster, families living in Paracatu de Baixo suffered greatly from changing living conditions. This is because the communities that were affected depended a lot on the cultivation of food and there was great conviviality among the residents. Now living in Mariana, in addition to an increase in the cost of living, the community has been scattered throughout the city, which makes communication and socialization difficult.
Mirella's testimony was extremely informative and touching. With this conversation, we were able to get a sense of the real impact that a catastrophe such as the Mariana dam breach can have on people.
We then held a conversation with André from the civil defense, who told us about the lack of information about the dam breach and the difficulty in rescuing the victims, since no training had been conducted before due to lack of knowledge about the risk of disaster.
He also spoke of the need to improve monitoring and map potential risks of environmental disasters so that harm reduction strategies can be devised for both the environment and the population.
In the afternoon we visited Paracatu de Baixo district and in this district, we could see houses, schools and a church that was destroyed by the mud. This our first direct contact with a site hit by the mud from the dam burst greatly impacted our team.
The school was one of the places that shook us the most, because as students we have a great appreciation for education and we were very excited to see the amount of mud that after 4 years was still mixed with school materials. In addition, we have seen a number of disaster outrage messages left on the walls inside the school.
Also in the district we found a resident, Mr. Antonio, who currently quit his job to take care of parents who lost their home and suffer from depression.
Day 3 - September 5, 2019
During the morning, we visited the Bento Rodrigues district, which was the district most affected by the Mariana disaster. On this visit, we could see houses, schools and cars destroyed by the mud.
Because it was the hardest hit district, we were greatly impacted by the extent of damage to building structures. Many houses were almost completely destroyed and traces of mud even on the second floor of some houses.
In addition, as the 19 deaths from the disaster were from people in the Bento community, interventions by the outraged population were far more frequent than those seen in Paracatu de Baixo. Some crosses were placed to allude to lost lives.
In the afternoon, we talked to a former resident of this district, José who is known as Zezinho do Bento, who currently lives in the city of Mariana
Mr. Zezinho told us about how his life changed after the dam broke and that he is currently fighting for the rights of the affected residents. to be finalized. Even on the day of our interview, his Zezinho was very discouraged, because he had argued with the Renova Foundation that he wanted to block his entry into the place where his new house is being built. He told us that he himself built his house in Bento district and saw it destroyed in seconds when the mud arrived.
We held a conversation with Vitor who is a former teenager living in Bento. He told us that at the time of the accident he was in class in the Bento Rodrigues district and told us the rush that was to escape from there.
Acknowledgments
In order to be able to carry out this whole project of Humanitarian Practices, the iGEM USP São Carlos team had the help of many people who were extremely important for the execution of the visit, documentary production, among other things. Listed below are the names of these people and to find out how each of them helped us, check out the Attributions page!
- André de Freitas Machado
- Eduardo Rodrigues
- Gabriela Staffa
- Jose do Nascimento de Jesus
- Júlia Gargitter
- Matheus Marrega
- Mirella Regina Lino de Sant’Ana
- Prof. Carlos Roberto Monteiro de Andrade
- Yuri Peres Asnis
- Vitório Augusto
- Antonio Lino Marcelino
- Culture and University Extension Rectory - PRCEU/USP
- Fraternity Maternidade - Ouro Preto - MG, Brazil
- Sao Carlos Institute of Physics - IFSC/USP
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WATER TREATMENT
We at the iGEM São Carlos Team have developed our IARA project with the objective of removing mercury ions dissolved in water by building a bacterial biofilter transformed by synthetic biology techniques. Thus, the project is closely correlated with water treatment. Therefore, we are concerned with participating in some educational project aimed at teaching the importance of water treatment methods, as well as in the awareness that encourages their conscious use and in knowing the current conventional water treatment method employed in Brazil.
During the development of the IARA project, we met the Municipal Secretary of Sustainable Development, Science and Technology and researcher Prof. Jose Tundisi. He was very interested in our project and put us in touch with some people from the São Carlos Autonomous Water and Sewerage Service (SAAE - Portuguese of Serviço Autônomo de Água e Esgoto)[2] through the participation of some of our team members in a meeting of the São Carlos Water Safety Committee, as well as to introduce us to the opportunity to participate in a course on Water, Sanitation and Health that took place at SAAE and was taught by Carleton University researcher PhD Banu Örmeci.
At the meeting with the Water Safety Committee, we got more information about the water treatment method employed in the city and we met SAAE operations manager Dr. Leila Patrizzi. From this contact, we discussed the possibility of doing some educational project in conjunction with SAAE.
Together with Dr. Leila, we discussed the possibility of conducting educational guidance for visiting children's classes at the SAAE Water Treatment Plant (WTP) and conducting a guided tour of the station facilities. We are extremely excited about the idea, as we recognize that it is of paramount importance to disseminate information about sustainable water use and its treatment, and we believe that through raising children's awareness we can also raise awareness indirectly.
Thus, on October 08, we visited SAAE WTP to receive training about the processes carried out at each stage of treatment, what are the sources of drinking water and how is the water quality control done in the municipality of São Carlos.
The course taught by Dr. Banu was designed for students and professors at the universities of São Carlos and covered in detail the pros and cons of various water and sewage treatment methods employed in other countries. At the end of the course, we presented our project to remove mercury in water using a biofilter as a proposal for treatment in polluted water. On the final day of the course, we asked Prof. Banu if she could guide us in addressing the problem and improving filter application. In this conversation, she informed us of likely public acceptance problems due to the use of bacteria in water treatment and that, therefore, greater care should be taken regarding the possible presence of bacteria in post-treatment water.
REFERENCES
- [1] SAMARCO. Entenda o rompimento. https://www.samarco.com/rompimento-de-fundao/
- [2] SAAE São Carlos - Serviço Autônomo de Água e esgoto. https://www.saaesaocarlos.com.br/saaesc/index.php
