Civil Engineering / İnşaat Mühendisliği

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/11147/13

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  • Book
    Citation - Scopus: 6
    Climate Change and Its Effects on Water Resources: Issues of National and Global Security
    (Springer, 2011) Baba, Alper; Gündüz, Orhan; Friedel, Michael J.; Tayfur, Gökmen; Howard, Ken W.F.; Chambel, Antonio
    National and global security can be assessed in many ways but one underlying factor for all humanity is to access to reliable sources of water for drinking, sanitation, food production and manufacturing industry. In many parts of the world, population growth and an escalating demand for water already threaten the sustainable management of available water supplies. Global warming, climate change and sea level rise are expected to intensify the resource sustainability issue in many water-stressed regions of the world by reducing the annual supply of renewable fresh water and promoting the intrusion of saline water into aquifers along sea coasts where 50% of the global population reside. Pro-active resource management decisions are required, but such efforts would be futile unless reliable predictions can be made to assess the impact of the changing global conditions that would impart upon the water cycle and the quality and availability of critical water reserves.
  • Article
    Citation - WoS: 27
    Citation - Scopus: 31
    Statistical Analysis of Causes of Death (2005-2010) in Villages of Simav Plain, Turkey, With High Arsenic Levels in Drinking Water Supplie
    (Taylor and Francis Ltd., 2015) Gündüz, Orhan; Bakar, Coşkun; Şimşek, Celalettin; Baba, Alper; Elçi, Alper; Gürleyük, Hakan; Mutlu, Merdiye; Çakır, Ayşe
    The purpose of this research was to compare the causes of death in 5 villages situated in Simav Plain, Turkey, during 2005-2010 where different arsenic levels were detected in drinking water supplies. Since groundwater in Simav Plain had arsenic concentrations that ranged between 7.1 and 833.9 ppb, a two-phase research was formulated. In the first phase, public health surveys were conducted with 1,003 villagers to determine the distribution of diseases. In the second phase, verbal autopsy surveys and official death records were used to investigate the causes of death. In total, 402 death cases were found in the study area where cardiovascular system diseases (44%) and cancers (15.2%) were major causes. Cancers of lung (44.3%), prostate (9.8%), colon (9.8%), and stomach (8.2%) were comparably higher in villages with high arsenic levels in drinking water supplies. Furthermore, the majority of cases of liver, bladder, and stomach cancers were observed in villages with high arsenic levels. © 2015 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
  • Article
    Citation - WoS: 2
    Citation - Scopus: 2
    Sample Collection Into Sterile Vacuum Tubes To Preserve Arsenic Speciation in Natural Water Samples
    (American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2013) Gündüz, Orhan; Gürleyük, Hakan; Çakır, Ayşe; Elçi, Alper; Baba, Alper; Şimşek, Celalettin
    The accurate speciation analysis of arsenic is a serious concern for water quality monitoring programs. Because the preservation of sample integrity until analysis is one of the most important aspects of speciation, this study aims to compare the performance of four different sample preservation methods under diverse conditions of sample quality. Natural samples with different characteristics were collected into the following containers to study their effectiveness: (1) standard high-density polyethylene bottle with no preservative; (2) empty, sterile Vacuette tube with no preservative; (3) sterile tripotassium ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (K3EDTA) Vacuette tube with K3EDTA additive; and (4) empty, sterile Vacuette tube with added hydrochloric acid (HCl). Known concentrations of arsenite [As(III)] were also added to each container to monitor the oxidation of As(III) to arsenate [As(V)]. The results revealed recovery ratios exceeding 95% in all containers with sterile vacuum conditions. In particular, the K3EDTA Vacuette tube yielded a recovery very close to 100% of the spiked As(III), which is known to rapidly oxidize to As(V). Overall, collecting the sample into a container under sterile vacuum conditions and using a universally accepted preserving agent such as EDTA or HCl significantly improved the preservation of the original species distribution in the water matrix studied, compared to sampling without the use of preservation methods. After validation by future research, these sterile vacuum tubes can possibly be utilized for collecting and storing samples for the routine speciation analysis of other elements such as selenium, chromium, and antimony.