SNC1D Science Journal

As we all know there are many issues in our environment and one of those issues is mercury in our water and air. Knowing this we need to come up with a plan to solve this issue before it’s too late and we can’t go back.

What Even is Mercury Poisoning:

Mercury poisoning is a serious environmental issue that is caused when plants, like coal-burning plants, release chemicals like mercury, a highly dangerous chemical to us, which gets into the air and water by polluting it. When left in the water it turns into a more dangerous form of mercury called methyl mercury, which gets stuck in aquatic creatures. Then when we eat aquatic creatures, such as fish, they get that chemical in our system harming us. This issue affects everyone and everything, and we need a solution.

My Goals:

My goals to help come up with a solution for mercury poisoning are to one get more and more people aware of this environmental issue. The other goal is to somehow find a way to get some water sources that high levels of mercury to go through an electrochemical process that has already been developed to get rid of most of the mercury in the water. I think these are good goals and will affect the environment in a good way because if more people are aware the more help we can get. I also think a good first step to solving this issue is getting rid of the mercury in the environment before we get rid of the thing that is causing it because that would be very difficult. However, doing what we can to still help is important.

My Teams:

When it comes to who will help make this plan come to life I came up with two teams.

Team 1: The members of my first team are famous actor, Mark Ruffalo and a member of my family, my step dad. The reason I picked out Mark Ruffalo and my step dad to be apart of team number one is because they have the skills I need for the job team number one has. Team number ones job is to spread awareness about mercury pollution and poisoning in the environment. Mark Ruffalo has good skills for this job because he has a big plat form which would be good to spread the word, Mark also knows and contributes a bit to helping out with the effects oil and gas industries has on the environment. The other member of this team, my step dad, is also good for this job because he knows quite a bit about mercury poisoning in water systems due to his experience with it. So with Mark Ruffalos passion with helping the environment, his big platforms and then my step dads experience, this will make a good team to spread the word.

Team 2: The members of my second team are students from Chalmers University of Technology. More specifically the ones who helped develop an electrochemical process to get rid of mercury in waters. They made a stable metal plate that binds other harmful metals, like mercury, to it. Since this device is stable once the mercury is in the device it won’t get to re-enter the waters. These are great members to help with the second objective (getting the electrochemical process to waters that need it) because they know the most about it since they made it and they probably want it to get around.

Resources:

If I have a plan all set the main thing I’m going to need to make it happen are resources. Some things that I’m gonna need are volunteers, objects, and connections to get the things to build or get the technology to get the electrochemical process and the last thing I’m going to need is money to help my plan get places. I need volunteers to help spread the plan to everyone they know and it’s also helpful to have extra hands. I need the things to make an electrochemical process because this is the most important part of the plan, this is the part that helps get rid of the actual mercury. The money would also be very helpful because this stuff will be expensive.

Long and Short Term Plans:

My short-term plan (spreading the word) should take only around 2 months especially since my team 1 has a member with a good platform. My long-term plan however I hope will only take 1 and a half years at most. The quicker we have this process happening the better the environment will be.

In conclusion, I think with my action plan we can get one step closer to getting rid of the effects mercury has caused us and our environment.

Resources: sciencedaily.com – blog.tentree.com – phys.org