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.
![](https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2016/a/ae/%E4%B8%A4%E8%BF%9E%E6%8B%8D.png)
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!
![](https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2016/9/9b/T--Peking--images_HP_other_work_fig2.png
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In order to assess whether there are potential dangers in our immediate vicinity, we extracted freshwater samples from Weiming Lake on campus and from 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.
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 is 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.