What is phytoremediation?
What is phytoremediation?
Phytoremediation is removing polluting contaminants from soil and water with plants.
How does that work?
The same way that plants absorb water and minerals from the soil through their roots, they can also absorb pollutants into their plant tissues.
Well GREAT! Now we have contaminated plants! What does that accomplish?
Depending on the pollutant, the metabolic reactions of the plants can break some of these contaminants down and make them non-toxic. Some of the contaminants such as heavy metals can't be broken down further. But storing the heavy metals in the plants concentrates them into a much smaller area compared to when these contaminants are spread throughout the environment in the soil and water. Concentrating the contaminants makes them much easier to manage and/or destroy. Sometimes the metals can be extracted from the plant material and reused; this process is called phytomining.
4 comments:
This was very informative. I learned a lot. Linda
this sounds interesting!
I find it amazing that we can use plants to help with such a serious issue. This was informative and I appreciated the fact that my question "Well great! Now we have contaminated plants!" was answered as soon as it popped into my head. The pictures were great too!
It is unfortunate that such a pretty place has been contaminted.
The Superfund was started in 1980, in 2009 300 cites on the priority list of 1,500 has been cleaned up. The Waste Management Research Institute estimates at least 10,000 cites should be added to the list with an extimated cost of $1.7 billion. The purpose of the Superfund is to get polluters to pay for clean up of hazardous waste. Congress under pressure by polluters failed to renew the tax on gas, oil and chemicals and the legislation expired in 1995 (Sustaining The Earth).
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