After learning about the public opinion on uranium, uranium pollution, and synthetic biology, we decided to design a popular science brochure (Fig. 1.), aimed at correcting some of the erroneous public perceptions we encountered. The feedback showed the public easily understood this brochure.
Additionally, we popularized iGEM among middle school students from the 2016 Peking University Alumni Children’s Summer Camp (Fig. 2A.), with the aim of helping them to develop a passion for biology, life sciences and synthetic biology. During this summer camp, there was a team coming to visit our lab and they were quite interested in the routine work of the iGEM team (Fig. 2B.). We sincerely hope that they will be the future stars on the Giant Jamboree stage!
In order to assess whether there are potential dangers in our immediate vicinity, we extracted freshwater samples from Weiming Lake on campus and coal-washing wastewater from Shan Xi province, and measured the uranyl concentrations of the water samples by ICP-MS. The result is showed in Fig. 3.
The uranyl concentrations in Weiming lake water and coal-washing wastewater were 21.6 and 36.0 nM, respectively. Both were well within the drinking-water standard of the EPA which states that the amount of uranium shall not exceed 30 μg/L, or about 126 nM1. It could thus be demonstrated that we had no need to worry too much about the effects of uranium pollution in daily life because the amount of uranium around us was within the normal range even in an otherwise quite polluted environment, such as around coal-mining operations.
Additionally, we also measured the intensity of radiation in the nuclear environmental chemistry laboratory where we did the experiments with uranyl-containing solutions. Interestingly, the radiation intensity value in the work area was close to that determined in the playground, which could be regarded as the background value. The data showed that we would not be affected by nuclear radiation even when doing these kinds of experiments, which met the requirements of biological safety.
