Did you know that Romania is the number one country in water pollution with nitrates (No3) from Europe? It’s high time for us to do something to change this fact!
— Levels of water contamination with nitrates —
This map was made in 2007, after several water tests made in the country. It represents the most affected districts of water contaminated with nitrates. In the red areas the contamination was registered in villages where people have access to water only from wells. The contamination is coming mostly from the bad conditions of sanitation and from the farms nearby.
128 ‘’blue baby syndrome’’ (methemoglobinemia) cases and 4 deaths were also registered the same year.
At present the problems are far from over being solved. In fact only 10% of the nitrates pollution problems were solved by other organizations working to improve water quality.
The situation got worse after the exploitations for gold in ‘’Rosia Montana’’ and shale gases in ‘’Pungesti’’ several other contaminated water problems appeared : the water of the rivers became red and yellow due high level concentration of heavy metals , cyanide , gas and petrol.
‘’Aries’’ River: Poisoned water
The River ‘’Aries’’ is situated in Transylvania near the town ‘’Turda’’. This river is probably one of the most poisoned river in Romania because all of the waste made in the past from gold exploration (‘Rosia Montana’) was discharged directly into it. The ‘’Aries’’ river and all the rivers from the area of ‘Rosia Montana‘ have reports of very high exceeding values , -above the legal limits – of a large number of chemical substances.
According to the report given by ‘’The Agency of Environmental Protection Alba’’, the normal values for manganese were exceeded more than 11 times. And this is not the only heavy metal found in the surrounding areas.
The arsenic registered a value of 5 times higher than the normal limit, the Iron73 times higher, Zinc 96 times higher and there are still many other metals in these acid waters.
On the other hand the water pollution in Romania refers to the tap water used in the houses in towns. Water4Life has already started the activity in analyzing water quality in Bucharest (the capital city) to see the level of water pollution in several apartments and houses.
The results of the tests showed us that the water contains only chlorine and large quantities of rust. 70% of the citizens in Bucharest and the other big towns prefer to buy bottled water instead of drinking tap water which has a chlorine smell and taste and sometimes the colour can be brown or turbid.