[ripthedrift]

.....

I worked on a project similar to this using spent mushroom compost in its third phase (mesophilic) , mesophiles are the microbes an fungi that inhabit the temperature range between 25 -40 °C (77 -104 °F)

To decontaminate mixed tannery waste which was illegally dumped on farm land....(nasty stuff full of heavy metals)



(Natural News)


Much of the land, air and water around the world have been contaminated by industrial waste and pollution. Many people are affected by the filth as it`s unfortunate but true that what`s in the air and water around our homes regularly ends up inside of our bodies. The problems are serious, but fortunately, nature has provided us with an environmental solution in an unlikely package: mushrooms. Mycelium from mushrooms has the unique ability to breakdown and detoxify a great deal of toxic industrial waste and pollution.

Mycelium is actually the fruit of a mushroom. In forests, the mycelia breakdown and recycle nitrogen, carbon and plant and animal debris; they turn the forests` waste products into rich soil.

However, Paul Stemets, a long time mushroom researcher, discovered that mushroom mycelium also has the unique ability to break down hydrocarbons - and hydrocarbons are at the base of many industrial pollutants. Everything from pesticides to dioxins have a hydrocarbon base.

According to Stemets, mycelium can break down and detoxify biological warfare agents and heavy metals, including lead and mercury. In addition, he`s found that mycelium can remove industrial toxins from the soil, including pesticides, chlorine, dioxin, and PCBs. Since many of these poisons are showing up in the umbilical cord blood of infants, it`s about time we got serious about getting them out of the environment. Using mushroom mycelium is an environmentally friendly way to do it, and it`s far less expensive than conventional methods of environmental cleanup.

Conventional methods of removing industrial contamination include treating the waste with chemicals or capturing the waste and burning it. Of course, the burning of industrial waste just releases those chemicals right back into the air we all breathe. And this time, it contains new and unknown chemical combinations - ones that might be more dangerous than the original ones.

To cleanse the soil of contaminants, mycelium absorbs the compounds of the soil and water around it. It acts as a filter to remove any usable materials, and then it releases enzymes to break down any remaining contaminants. As an example of its effectiveness: when soil contaminated with diesel fuel is inoculated with mycelia from oyster mushrooms, it was found to lose its toxicity in just 8 weeks.

Many plants benefit from a relationship with mycelium, and mycelium makes up about 10 percent of many healthy soils. Trees often become more drought and disease resistant with mycelium. Mycelium can also kill many agricultural pests; it even kills problems including Staphylococcus sp. and E. coli.

Stemets tells us that mycelium can also be used to cleanse groundwater of contaminants and pollutants. Yet, as with many natural healing techniques, what we really need are more people using them.


more ear


very cool eh

This post has been edited by ripthedrift: 07 January 2011 - 10:11 PM

[northwest]

Cool as indeed. It's Paul Stamets. The man's a genius, and I don't say that often. If you haven't already seen it he's got a talk on ted.com that briefly explains the work he's done and is doing. He's written a few books too, i you're interested in this sort of thing check out 'mycelium running'.

Talk is here hxxp://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world.html

[northwest]

More recent stuff here - youtube.com/paulstamets

[Biokid]

Quote

Mycelium is actually the fruit of a mushroom.

No it isn't, it is the other way round. Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of the Mycelium which ripen and produce spores to enable reproduction.

[Randalizer]

 Biokid, on Jan 7 2011, 08:46 PM, said:

Quote

Mycelium is actually the fruit of a mushroom.

No it isn't, it is the other way round. Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of the Mycelium which ripen and produce spores to enable reproduction.

Mycelium is the body of the plant.

[ripthedrift]

 northwest, on Jan 8 2011, 03:13 AM, said:

Cool as indeed. It's Paul Stamets. The man's a genius, and I don't say that often. If you haven't already seen it he's got a talk on ted.com that briefly explains the work he's done and is doing. He's written a few books too, i you're interested in this sort of thing check out 'mycelium running'.

Talk is here hxxp://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world.html

yeah mycologist Paul Stamets is doing some very interesting work in bio-remediation.

he is giving a work shop for the composting network of Europe on odour control using bio-filters blended with compost and fungi ... I have an invite so if I'm able I shall be going to badan badan in southern Germany. Got to love mycologists though they all seem to be a little eccentric (well any I have met). funny enough he is on my curriculum second module for my degree course


Bio
Paul Stamets is founder and president of Fungi Perfecti, a mushroom wholesale and retail sales business. Paul has written six mushroom-related books. Several are used as textbooks around the world by the gourmet and medicinal mushroom industries.


He is the author of many scholarly papers in peer-reviewed journals (The International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms; Evidence Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine (eCAM, Oxford University Press); Herbalgram, and others) He has written more than twenty patents.

Paul started a mushroom wholesale and retail sales business, Fungi Perfecti, LLOYD, in 1980. The business has four laboratories, 10,000 sq. ft. of clean rooms, and is equipped with 20+ laminar flow benches for doing in vitro propagation work.


Paul has received several environmental awards. He is an advisor to the Program of Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona Medical School, Tucson; on the Editorial Board of The International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms, and was appointed to the G.A.P./G.M.P. Board of the U.S.


Pharmacopoeia. Dr. Andrew Weil recommends his products. Stamets is the supplier and co-investigator of the first two NIH funded clinical studies using medicinal mushrooms in the United States. His strain collection is extensive and unique, with many of the strains coming from old growth forests. He is involved in several other research trials ongoing and pending.

He received the 1998 "Bioneers Award" from The Collective Heritage Institute, and the 1999 "Founder of a New Northwest Award" from the Pacific Rim Association of Resource Conservation and Development Councils. In 2008, Paul received the National Geographic Adventure Magazine's Green-O-vator and the Argosy Foundation's E-chievement Awards.




...............

This post has been edited by ripthedrift: 08 January 2011 - 09:47 AM

[Biokid]

Rip, I was not contradicting Paul but the reporter - he/she has got it wrong which is quite often how the Public are misled by non-scientists attempting to be scientific, often with disastrous results.

[ripthedrift]

 Biokid, on Jan 8 2011, 12:13 PM, said:

Rip, I was not contradicting Paul but the reporter - he/she has got it wrong which is quite often how the Public are misled by non-scientists attempting to be scientific, often with disastrous results.

Biokid I never thought you were contradicting Paul or me .. so no sweat dude .... it was a an error I should have seen but did not I understand your point all to well

................

[Ganjaman17]

interesting read that, last year i innoculated various bits of woodland with some spore injected grains(with mycelial growth on). there was golden oysters, portabelo, and lions mane. ive only just discovered my love for picking and eating mushrooms for years i hated them but had only tried shop bought ones. did you make it to baden baden ? ive been a few times i have family over there. i believe more research needs to done with mushrooms, as they obviously have alot of potential for future use, maybe a way to clean the world with the shit we contaminate it with

[ripthedrift]

 Ganjaman17, on 15 January 2012 - 10:40 AM, said:

interesting read that, last year i innoculated various bits of woodland with some spore injected grains(with mycelial growth on). there was golden oysters, portabelo, and lions mane. ive only just discovered my love for picking and eating mushrooms for years i hated them but had only tried shop bought ones. did you make it to baden baden ? ive been a few times i have family over there. i believe more research needs to done with mushrooms, as they obviously have alot of potential for future use, maybe a way to clean the world with the shit we contaminate it with

agreed Ganjaman17

I'm just reading a few books on the subject along with one on bio-char ( sequestration of carbon )

very interesting,

I have all ways used charcoal in my planting mix for its ability to trap and hold oxygen in its massive surface area.

A gram of bio-char/charcoal has a surface area of any where between 500/1500 Sq M (depending on how it was produced) ...

even spent carbon from old filters is still very useful from a horticulturist's point of view ...and will benefit any soil types


......peace

[Otherwise L.A.C.]

Fascinating. Thanks for posting

[Cambium]

Oyster mushrooms grown on oil spill are perfectly safe to eat too. I have read that problems start when the pollution involves heavy metals. Mushrooms will hyper-accumulate them rather than metabolize them like it does when eating hydrocarbon chains. They are still useful when looking at heavy metal toxicity, but the mushroom needs to be removed from the site and dealing with appropriately before the mushroom turns to mush. Photoremediaton can be good for hyper-accumulation of heavy metals too and a little easier to control. I think Stamets has developed a strain of oyster mycelium that will thrive in a salt water environment that he makes into floating booms of inoculated substrate for deployment at sea

[ripthedrift]

 Cambium, on 15 January 2012 - 12:49 PM, said:

Oyster mushrooms grown on oil spill are perfectly safe to eat too. I have read that problems start when the pollution involves heavy metals. Mushrooms will hyper-accumulate them rather than metabolize them like it does when eating hydrocarbon chains. They are still useful when looking at heavy metal toxicity, but the mushroom needs to be removed from the site and dealing with appropriately before the mushroom turns to mush. Photoremediaton can be good for hyper-accumulation of heavy metals too and a little easier to control. I think Stamets has developed a strain of oyster mycelium that will thrive in a salt water environment that he makes into floating booms of inoculated substrate for deployment at sea

hope your well mate top interesting post


.....


funny that post cambium, using worms for bio-remeadation of sewerage sludge, as worms interact with other microbes in the break down of the sludge, the over all reduction in volume of the sludge is around 75/80%

with the worms bio-accumulating heavy metals within there own bio-mass (with it seems no problems)
not only that the reduction of the original heavy metal content is reduced by a factor of 50 % but as yet no one as worked out where the other 50 % has gone ......

even more interesting is that when the worm mass dies, the heavy metal content remains locked in the soil but in a chelatable format, but still remaining available in a non soluble format for use, so no pollution

This post has been edited by ripthedrift: 15 January 2012 - 02:44 PM

[Cambium]

Alright Rip, fine thanks mate. Hope you're good

Interesting about the worms, I guess that them being slightly more complex life form helps them do something that fungi cant. His suggestions for the fukashima plant involve having to remove most of the mushroom bio-mass also. Who knows what the future holds for myco-remediation tho, strain isolation and hybrids will likely bring some interesting possibilities in the near future. I was digging around google the other day and got caught reading about a project, over your way actually, that is developing and testing a myco-herbicide to be used in controlling rhododendron in Caledonian forests, I guess they are in the process of isolating a strain that will only overcome the rodo and not everything else too

Quote

Many people have written me and asked more or less the same question: “What would you do to help heal the Japanese landscape around the failing nuclear reactors?”

The enormity and unprecedented nature of this combined natural and human-made disaster will require a massive and completely novel approach to management and remediation. And with this comes a never before seen opportunity for collaboration, research and wisdom.

The nuclear fallout will make continued human habitation in close proximity to the reactors untenable. The earthquake and tsunami created enormous debris fields near the nuclear reactors. Since much of this debris is wood, and many fungi useful in mycoremediation are wood decomposers and build the foundation of forest ecosystems, I have the following suggestions:


1. Evacuate the region around the reactors.

2. Establish a high-level, diversified remediation team including foresters, mycologists, nuclear and radiation experts, government officials, and citizens.

3. Establish a fenced off Nuclear Forest Recovery Zone.

4. Chip the wood debris from the destroyed buildings and trees and spread throughout areas suffering from high levels of radioactive contamination.

5. Mulch the landscape with the chipped wood debris to a minimum depth of 12-24 inches.

6. Plant native deciduous and conifer trees, along with hyper-accumulating mycorrhizal mushrooms, particularly Gomphidius glutinosus, Craterellus tubaeformis, and Laccaria amethystina (all native to pines). G. glutinosus has been reported to absorb – via the mycelium – and concentrate radioactive Cesium 137 more than 10,000-fold over ambient background levels. Many other mycorrhizal mushroom species also hyper-accumulate.

7. Wait until mushrooms form and then harvest them under Radioactive HAZMAT protocols.

8. Continuously remove the mushrooms, which have now concentrated the radioactivity, particularly Cesium 137, to an incinerator. Burning the mushroom will result in radioactive ash. This ash can be further refined and the resulting concentrates vitrified (placed into glass) or stored using other state-of-the-art storage technologies.


By sampling other mushroom-forming fungi for their selective ability to hyper-accumulate radioactivity, we can learn a great deal while helping the ecosystem recover. Not only will some mushroom species hyper-accumulate radioactive compounds, but research has also shown that some mycorrhizal fungi bind and sequester radioactive elements so they remain immobilized for extended periods of time. Surprisingly, we learned from the Chernobyl disaster that many species of melanin-producing fungi have their growth stimulated by radiation.

The knowledge gained through this collaborative process would not only benefit the areas affected by the current crisis, but would also help with preparedness and future remediation responses.

How long would this remediation effort take? I have no clear idea but suggest this may require decades. However, a forested national park could emerge –The Nuclear Forest Recovery Zone – and eventually benefit future generations with its many ecological and cultural attributes.

I do not know of any other practical remedy. I do know that we have an unprecedented opportunity to work together toward solutions that make sense.

Paul Stamets

[ripthedrift]

.........rhododendron (ponticam) spelling??

They are a real pest and very bad for our own habitat/wild fauna, another big mistake like the Japanese knot weed

.......... why oh why do we insist on meddling ........

be safe mate