Turning Brownfields to Blooming Meadows, With the Help of Fungi
Before I got Covid I was involved in an art/eco project regenerating a patch of toxic canalside land in Birmingham. I brought my nascent composting knowledge and took away loads more about soil remediation, before I had to retire.
This is a very similar situation where “Danielle Stevenson cleans up carbon-based pollutants and heavy metals from contaminated sites using fungi and plants.” Fungus can digest most-anything carbon based, which includes oil and plastics, while plants can extract metals and toxins from the soil for safe disposal (or even reclamation) elsewhere.
In nature, it’s actually plants that pull metals out of soil. And so there are fungi, they’re called arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, that can help plants do that better. And so on Taylor Yard [the Los Angeles railyard] and other sites, I’ve worked with a combination of decomposer fungi, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, and plants that we previously found to be able to pull metals like lead and arsenic out of the soil into their aboveground parts. These plants can then be removed from the site without having to remove all of that contaminated soil.
Fascinating stuff.
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