Stale Beer to Clean Up Contamination?

night_flyer writes: "Stale Beer may be used to clean up one of the worst superfund sites in the U.S. ... Now the question is, who leaves beer in the fridge long enough to go stale?" The site in question is a former zinc mine in Oklahoma which is full of toxic leavings, and has been on the EPA's Superfund hotlist for a few decades. A University of Tulsa professor named Tom Harris, who originally considered mollasses, is quoted as saying that "a wetlands treated with beer would be more effective in removing zinc and lead from runoff water than an untreated wetlands."

Comments

This is so appropriate

[PD]

The earth and beer are so much alike. For example, nobody can truly own either one. The earth is nearly eternal, and we are just custodians of it for a little while. And all we can really do with beer is delay it a little while on it's long trek to the sea.

Re:This is so appropriate

[Dancin_Santa]

That was absolutely beautiful, man. If we ever meet, drinks are on me.

Dancin Santa

Sometimes the mud comes back at you.

[Medievalist]

/.
Well, it's hard to tell if this is a fake article or not. Stale beer might foster growth of beneficial organisms, I dunno.
On the other claw, everyone thought it was OK to use wood preserved with copper arsenate (that's the greenish pressure-treated stuff, highly toxic to bugs and you really shouldn't be breathing that sawdust) on docks and piers. The arsenic leaches out so slowly that it distributes itself harmlessly in the bottom mud, right?
Wrong. The mud-dwelling annelids (them's worms to us country folk) concentrate the arsenic compounds in their gullets until they reach a certain level of toxicity, then they barf it up into the current - killing anything that just happens to be passing and measurably contaminating the waterflow.
Doesn't particularly bother the worms in the long run, but now we've got steadily increasing arsenic in America's waterways that isn't going to get better anytime soon - the worms have got a couple decades worth of arsenic to puke up yet.
Now do you understand the furor over arsenic levels in water? Ol' Dubya ain't as stupid as he looks. Those lumber companys have invested a lot in the pressure-treat process, and they make some very tasty campaign contributions.
--Charlie

The Grant I've Always wanted to Write

[desertfool]

" Tulsa and Oklahoma are seeking a $320,000 grant from the EPA to further the wetland research, Nairn said." -- From article

A grant application for beer. Amazing, I wish I would have thought about that when I was in college.

Questions

[zpengo]

• Would digested and released count as "stale"?
• What about Billy Beer?
• If a can of beer went stale in a toxic dump, would it make a sound?
• All work and no beer make Homer go something something.
• Do imported beers work better than domestic?
• Does stale beer actually help, or does it just make the toxic waste look better around midnight?

Re:Questions

[AntiNorm]

All work and no beer make Homer go something something

When I was seventeen
I drank a very good beer
I drank a very good beer
I purchased with a fake ID
My name was Brian McGee
I stayed up listening to Queen
When I was seventeen

-- Homer Simpson

---

Re:Questions

[s20451]

What about Billy Beer?

We elected the wrong Carter.

expired beer

[NaturePhotog]

A Tulsa beer distributor, who wishes to remain anonymous, will donate its expired beer to the project. The distributor annually destroys about $200,000 worth of expired beer. What comes to mind:

• How do you tell when mass-produced American beer is expired? Bud, Miller, et al, taste bad at any point in their lives. I guess that's why that "born on dating" nonsense.
• Destroying $200,000 worth of beer anually??? That's in excess of 50,000 six packs a year at wholesale prices. Me thinks they need a little better handle on purchases vs. sales...No wonder they want to remain anonymous.
• Isn't this going to lead to an awful lot of dead slugs? A pie tin full of stale beer was how my parents used to kill slugs in their garden.
• How do they plan to keep the local college students out? Even if the beer is "expired", I can picture a local frat backing a pickup up to the pond with a pump and a 55-gallon drum before their next party...