SHORT RESEARCH AND DISCUSSION ARTICLE Trapping fresh sea breeze in desert? Health status of Camanchaca, Atacama’s fog Estefanía Bonnail 1 & Ricardo Cunha Lima 1 & Gladys Martínez Turrieta 2 Received: 8 March 2018 /Accepted: 8 May 2018 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Water fog composition was investigated at a fog harvesting installation in the coast of Atacama (North Chile). Chañaral is historically affected by mining contamination discharges. Hydro-chemical characterization of fog water from top of the mountain (where capture installation is located) and at the bottom of the mountain (after vertical transportation where an aquaponic system is located) revealed many compositional differences that compromise the use of water. High acidity and high concentrations in Cu and As in water collected on top of the mountain were found; meanwhile, acidity and Cu decreased, and As levels overpassed the drinking water standards after the vertical transportation. Collected data was assessed according to national and international regulatory standards, neutralization factors (NF), sodium adsorption ratio (SAR), and ion ratios to determine origin of contam- ination and suitability of destined for human consumption, irrigation, or aquaculture purposes. Keywords Marine fog . Metal contamination . Human risk . Falda Verde . Fog collector Introduction Atacama region (Chile) is one of the most arid regions in the world. However, despite of the scarcity of water, important activities such as mining or agriculture take place. But, not all the valleys and areas are able to use the water resources due to a decrement of the quantity and the quality. This is the case of Chañaral Bay, a city of 12 thousand inhabitants located in the northern coastal area of Chile (Atacama Region, Fig. 1), where former mining events have extremely contaminated the Salado River, becoming in a useless water source. Approximately 150 million tons of tailings from El Salvador copper mine were dumped without treatment directly into Chañaral Bay via the Salado River (Castilla 1983; Paskoff and Petiot 1990) causing a beach to widen (Castilla and Correa 1997; Ramírez et al. 2005). Furthermore, some natural events, such as recent floods (2015 and 2017), have promoted the resurgence of contamination in the area. Nevertheless, there is a particular meteorological event oc- curring over the Eastern Pacific, more precisely in the western coast from Chile and Peru, which promotes the introduction of water inland. This phenomenon is called BCamanchaca,^ a high-elevation fog derived from the stratus and stratocumulus decks coming from the sea. Therefore, taking this water source as a sustainable advantage, many projects have been executed in order to catch fog (Klemm et al. 2012; Batisha 2015). Fog harvesting is a non-conventional low-cost method for production of freshwater, very popular around the world as water source, especially in place where water access is restrict- ed—Africa (Olivier 2002; Harb et al. 2016); Asia (Abdul– Wahab et al. 2010; Wang et al. 2011; Gandhidasan and Abualhamayel 2012; Wang et al. 2015); Europe (Marzol Jaen 2002; Blás et al. 2010); America (UNEP 1997; Morera et al. 2012; Weiss–Penzias et al. 2018); and particularly in Chile (Cereceda et al. 1992; Nef 2001; Larraín et al. 2002). The expected yield and the water quality are the most impor- tant factors determining the feasibility of implementing a fog water collection (Olivier 2002). Responsible editor: Gerhard Lammel * Estefanía Bonnail estefania.bonnail@uda.cl Ricardo Cunha Lima ricardo.cunha@uda.cl Gladys Martínez Turrieta g.martinez@gmtconsultora.cl 1 Centro de Investigaciones Costeras–Universidad de Atacama (CIC– UDA), University of Atacama, Avenida Copayapu 485, Copiapó, Atacama, Chile 2 GMT Consultora E.I.R.L., Providencia, Santiago, Chile Environmental Science and Pollution Research https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-2278-6