03 Jul 2002,
Herwig Schuster
Sampling tour to villages (Romania)
 
Today we had a sampling tour to some villages  where we supposed that they could be affected by pollution...one of them is  Herja. A small stream is running through this village. It is totally  red-coloured by heavy metal pollution...just a few meters beside this creek  there a wells and people are drinking the water from there...just  incredible.
 
We stopped there with the action bus and within  some minutes we were surrounded by dozens of children…we quickly packed out our  stickers…just incredible how happy there were about! Soon almost all children  were temporarily Greenpeace children with the stickers on their bodies although  they have never heard about Greenpeace...then some of them started to collect  waste from the river side...we promised to bring it to a correct place for  disposal.
 
At the same time we made a lot of  analyses...unfortunately we found out that the water there is partly very acid-like. It is quite a hopeless situation. The people there do not have  alternatives, they have to use this water. But we could give them some hints how  to reduce the risks, like to do not store the water in aluminium pots because  aluminium gets solved in acids. So at least we could help them a bit to avoid  the worst consequences caused by the pollution of their environment!
 

 
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