A lake popular with Instagrammers due to its bright turquoise colors has been revealed as a highly toxic artificial pond used to dump ash from a nearby coal plant. Officials have now issued a warning for people to avoid taking pictures in it due to it being filled with chemicals.
Speaking on Russian social network VKontakte last month, the Siberian Generating Company, who runs the nearby power plant, said:
In the last week, our ash dump of the Novosibirsk TEZ-5 has become the star of social networks. But you CANNOT swim in the ash dump. Its water has a high-alkaline environment. This is due to the fact that calcium salts and other metal oxides are dissolved in it. Skin contact with such water may cause an allergic reaction!
The bottom of the lake is said to be so muddy that it’s almost impossible to get out of. Continuing to write in capital letters, they added: "THEREFORE, WE ASK YOU VERY MUCH THAT IN YOUR QUEST FOR A SELFIE YOU DON'T FALL DOWN INTO THE ASH DUMP! THIS IS THE BIGGEST RISK."
The water gets its bright color due to the depth of the lake, as well as the various metal oxides that have been dissolved in it, the company said. The water is also very alkaline, with a pH of more than 8.
Lead image: "newzealand_2009_117" by Saigoheiki, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
If you go to Yahoo! you will see that 1 in 5 articles is about what a Kardashian is doing right now. Fstoppers has fallen into this trap with Instagram.
Now I know it’s a huge platform for creatives to talk about, but it’s getting to the point that I use that social media platform less because I read too much of it here.
You know, you are right. I am looking everywhere for good informative similar blogs about photography and if you have any good sources please share. I am also tired of these nonsense posts.
The problem with these sites (and most blogs), when they start to get big they lose their focus and are only concerned about advertising dollars. I gave up on fstoppers months ago. I do like thephoblographer.com and dpreview
.
True. I can't say I blame them for wanting more revenue but I expected more from them. I also follow thephoblographer.com. Cheers.
Edit: Forgot to say that thephoblographer.com is not any better really. Something tells me Apple is paying nicely for this blog.
They are not any better. That is true but the self indulgence and self promotion on this site has gone overboard.
Maybe it's the Caribbean sun :-)...
Agreed. I've been looking all over. Really what I do any more is find individual photographers that do work that i like and then i just read their blogs to see what they are doing and how. It's Reeeeeaally hard though to find photogs. Any time you google anything that even loosely resembles high end photographers, google automatically reverts to showing you ads. Not just with that, it's with all google searches. It's impossible to find any useful info from google any more because it's so ad driven.
No joke. This article and the three preceding articles are either directly about Instagram or have references to Instagram in them. Honestly fstoppers used to be my go to site but it's a distant 3rd now. I especially loved the "look at us talk about our old job" videos. Too much self indulgence to hold my interest anymore.
Hilarious!
The fact that there is such a thing as an "Influencer" should make us all question the world we live in. I deleted Instagram off my phone because it was just a time and data suck.
I read an article about it a few days ago. This lake is really toxic. But do you know what? It's their health!
Nice photo of New Zealand
Yes. I thought the same. That looks like Lake Pukaki.
It's actually not toxic at all. It's alkaline. There's no toxicity. Title is clickbait.
The metal oxides are what make the water toxic, particularly mercury oxide as a result of burning coal.
The company that dumps there said nothing about mercury oxide and nothing about toxicity. Where are you getting your information from?
Would you swim in it? Before you answer, swimming means you could potentially swallow some of the water. So, would you swim in it?
Coal is nasty dirty stuff and we shouldn't be burning it.
There's lots of bodies of water I wouldn't swim in, but that doesn't make them toxic.
I'm not talking other bodies of water. I'm talking about this one. Yes or no...would you swim in it? Who are we kiddin'. We know the answer is No.
Are you seriously suggesting a person's desire to swim in a lake determines the lake's TOXICITY level?
--"It's actually not toxic at all. It's alkaline. There's no toxicity. Title is clickbait." -Terry Wright
Your words, not mine.
It's hilarious how you continue to avoid the question. It's as if you didn't want to get trapped. Dude, it was checkmate 5 moves ago. lol
Trapped by what? Do you know what toxicity even means? It's like I'm talking to a child. Go bother someone else with your asinine logic.
Because your health is only temporary, but Instagram fame is FOREVER.
The number one reason for this website is to make income for the people who run it. The second mission would be to share interesting information and other articles on photography and related topics. Yes there does seem to be many self promoting in many of the articles posted, but I have learned to scan through them before just reading all of them.
It is easy to point out the faults of sites like this, it is another to resolve the issues. Fix the issues and there is no faults to point out. For those who point out that this is such a poor platform compared to it's once former glory, why not share your knowledge. Submit the type of articles you would like to read. Even better become a staff writer for the site. Don't fix the blame, fix the problem. If the problem is fixed, there is no blame to fix.
Do Lee or Patrick curate the articles or they just let the writers run amuck?
It’s also important to keep in mind that the “writers” here aren’t journalists, reporters, and some may not even have writing credentials or experience. They are photographers who happen to write about photography and aggregate various kinds of stories into one location, and occasionally blog posts about their experiences. Many, I imagine, write between jobs or in their free time. Being a pro photographer doesn’t automatically make you a pro photography writer. There is nothing wrong with that, but we can’t realistically expect everyone to write world class articles.
Also, I like the articles about Instagram. Nothing wrong with a light story to make you chuckle.
Why is there a photo of Lake Pukaki in New Zealand as the cover? It literally relates in no way to the article about some russian pond.
It is not even a lake, but an artificial reservoir, a pit. Around a bunch of warnings. But people are a little stupid.