Harmful Algal Blooms: The Water’s Enemy
There is an ongoing shortage of water across the world that affects millions of people
still to this day, and while we seem to have an excess of water here in America, so many people
are drinking contaminated water across the globe and can go days without the proper
hydration they need. With studying the source of these contaminants, we can come up with a
variety of solutions to help the communities receive the basic human needs to live better lives.
I have chosen the community of Mahola, located in Western Kenya to examine in this
experiment. These individuals rely on Oyula Spring as their only source of water to serve over
200 people. Although this spring seems to always have had plenty of water, there are several
forces contributing to the water becoming unsafe for the community to drink thus making the
people sicker and dehydrated. Due to the spring being unprotected the water has become privy
to animal contaminants, surface runoff, human waste and especially in these times COVID along
with other diseases. The least likely threat however is the growth of algae, specifically the
growth of harmful algal blooms otherwise known as HAB’s. It’s bad enough these people have
to survive on little to nothing, having very limited resources that water should be the least of
their worries. However, since they lack the resources the water that they drink has become a
problem as nature has taken a turn against them and they need to look for outside help to
access the necessary resources to remedy their life-threatening situation.
To emulate as well as understand the effect of HABs on the environment and thus the
effect on humans we set up an experiment on regular spring water in three 50ml test tubes,
one was left as a control, one was infiltrated .05 ml of the HAB’s found in a contaminated water
source, while the last test tube was infiltrated with .10 ml of the HAB’s found in the same
source as the second test tube. We monitored these samples over the span of two weeks under
sunlight and found that the two test tubes containing the harmful algal blooms become very
murky in color, the nitrate levels increasing as well as the pH value declining. After just one
week the nitrate levels and pH are as follows:
Nitrate
Measured in ppm
