Civil Engineering / İnşaat Mühendisliği

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

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2012 - 20133

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Institution Author: search.filters.institutionAuthor.Baba, AlperPublisher: search.filters.publisher.American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)

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  • Conference Object
    An Integrated Assessment of Water Quality in an Arsenic Containing Aquifer: Milestones From Hydrogeology To Public Health
    (American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2012) Gündüz, Orhan; Şimşek, Celalettin; Elçi, Alper; Baba, Alper; Bakar, Çoşkun; Gürleyük, Hakan; Çakır, A.; Mutlu, Merdiye
    A multi-disciplinary research is being conducted in Simav Plain, Turkey where an arsenic containing aquifer is at the center of attention. The study is not only aimed to understand the sources and mechanisms of the presence of high arsenic levels in groundwater but also to determine the associated consequences with regards to human health. The high arsenic levels in most groundwater (N=33, avg. 162 ppb), surface water (N=9, avg. 76.6 ppb) and geothermal water (N=3, avg. 406 ppb) samples are strongly related to high occurrences of arsenic in rocks and soils of the plain, which range between 7.1 and 833.9 ppm with an average of 49 ppm. These values correspond to several orders of magnitude higher than international standards and world averages in water and soil, respectively. With this motivation, this research also focuses on human health in the study area associated with exposure to these high arsenic levels via numerous pathways. Consequently, more than 1000 individuals were personally surveyed by public health specialists to determine an inventory of diseases in the area. Furthermore, a verbal autopsy study was also conducted with relatives of the deceased, which were further verified with hospital records, to understand the underlying death cause. As a result, certain cancer rates were found to exceed national averages and the results statistically demonstrated a potential link with high arsenic levels mainly through oral exposure.
  • Conference Object
    The Use of Cokriging Algorithm for Arsenic Mapping in Groundwater Systems
    (American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2012) Gündüz, Orhan; Elçi, Alper; Şimşek, Celalettin; Baba, Alper
    Accurate mapping of the spatial distribution of arsenic in groundwater is an important but equally difficult task to complete due to a number of uncertainties. Classical univariate interpolation algorithms could sometimes be insufficient to capture high concentration and high gradient areas. Under these circumstances, the use of an auxiliary parameter could provide better estimates of arsenic distribution. Based on this premise, arsenic cokriging with a correlated parameter can improve the performance of interpolation and can enhance the quality of predictions. In order to test this hypothesis, a water quality dataset from an arsenic containing aquifer in Simav Plain, Turkey is used to develop arsenic distribution maps. Arsenic is cokriged with correlated parameters such as manganese, iron and dissolved oxygen; and the results are compared with univariate interpolation algorithms such as ordinary kriging and inverse distance weighing. The comparisons were performed with cross validation at sampling locations and assessed based on mean and root mean squared errors. The results revealed that maps developed using arsenic cokriging with iron have given the smallest error value and have shown closest fit to the extreme values in the dataset. Accordingly, arsenic cokriging with iron is believed to be a promising approach in mapping arsenic distributions in groundwater.
  • 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.