AESEDA News :: Returning to AESEDA as a graduate student: an interdisciplinary journey
As a graduate student of Natural Resource Management with a focus on water resources at Universiteit Utrecht in the Netherlands, I am interested in topics that relate to both the environment and the society in which we live. This interest goes back to my undergraduate years in Geography at Penn State (2001- 2005). During this time, I worked one summer for Dr. Petra Tschakert to collect material on small-scale gold mining in Ghana. To revisit what seemed like fascinating research, I applied for a graduate level internship with the Alliance for Earth Sciences, Engineering and Development in Africa (AESEDA). With Petra's support and guidance, I embarked on a six-month research project on mercury contamination in Ghana's small-scale mining sector, taking my education outside the classroom in the Netherlands to gold mining areas in Southern Ghana.
Small-scale gold mining is currently one of AESEDA's project areas. Most of the mining research done previously has been focused on miners and miners' health, and I was excited to come to AESEDA to investigate more explicitly environmental effects of mercury in mining. Small-scale operators use mercury to amalgamate and eventually extract gold from mined materials. There are many unknowns with respect to how mercury is entering the river environment, its location (water column or sediments) and behavior within the river, and its effect on river fish and subsequent consumption of fish by people. My internship had two parts: first, I undertook computer-based research on the spatial dimensions of mercury contamination, and second, I conducted field work on mercury and fish in Southern Ghana for this parts of this summer.
The computer-based part of my research explored the spatial distribution and underlying statistical patterns of existing mercury measurements in Ghanaian rivers, collected in 2003 by Grace Darabor (currently a Ph.D student in the department of Energy and Geo-Environmental Engineering at Penn State) and Dr. Francis Momade (Professor of Mining and Mineral Engineering at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, KNUST, in Ghana). I was able to present the results of my work at the First International Conference on Environmental Research, Technology, and Policy (ERTEP) in Accra, Ghana, this July.
My fieldwork consisted of semi-structured interviews with fish sellers, fish buyers, and fishermen in the mining towns of Dunkwa, Bogoso, and Tarkwa. There were two goals for the interviews. The first was to gain a better understanding on how these different groups of people understand the linkage between mercury, fish, and human health. The second goal was to explore to which extent this knowledge influences their fish consumption and trading activities. Furthermore, I conducted interviews with mercury expert and University lecturer Ray Voegborlo and Professor Alfred Dassah, a renowned fish expert in Ghana, both at KNUST in Kumasi. I learned a tremendous amount on fish species and the dynamics of mercury contamination. Finally, I was able to visit small-scale mining sites and see with my own eyes how miners use and conserve mercury.
The fieldwork aspect of this research is most important for three main reasons. First, mercury is a hot topic in terms of contamination. Second, small-scale miners are typically seen as environmental villains due to their supposedly reckless use of mercury. Third, if mercury is being absorbed by fish and the fish are being eaten locally, there could be consequences from mercury use that reach beyond the miners and the mining sites. Preliminary results indicate that mercury contamination of fish is generally within World Health Organization (WHO) Standards. Most people living near mining sites have only limited knowledge about potential risks of mercury for human health.
Last summer, I worked in Eastern Poland to conduct research for my Masters thesis. However, I spent most of my time in the computer lab working on statistics related to water quality. My fieldwork in Ghana was my first experience interacting directly with people as environmental agents and employing research methods and techniques to obtain valuable information to my questions. I was lucky to have a great research team that included Raymond Tutu, Jones Adjei (both students at the Regional Institute for Population Studies at the University of Ghana), Jessi Lehman (a Geography undergrad at Penn State) and Petra Tschakert. I am grateful to AESEDA for allowing me to be part of such an exciting and educational experience.
&mdash Jennie Karalewich
Jennie's work was supported by Dr. Tschakert's grant from the Africana Research Center at Penn State.