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Mining Metals Using Plants and Trees?
elroySF writes "An MIT Technology Review article says "...Scientists reported Monday that they have bioengineered a plant capable of absorbing arsenic from soil and sequenced the complete set of genes for a microbe that can remove heavy metals from water." It goes on to say "...Some scientists even see the day when trees and grasses will be used to mine metals and minerals without disturbing the soil."
" We had a story about this a while back.
Can you imagine you walk into an arsenic mine that looks like a peach orchard and decide to sample the goods?
It's cool that people are engineering plants and critters to concentrate these potentially toxic compounds...but what happens when the plant or bug dies? You still have the question of collecting the remains and then doing something safe with them.
Also, some plants already concentrate arsenic in their seeds. (It's been a while since I heard this, but I seem to recall it's either apples or apricots.)
Oh yeah. First post!
Oh, go on, check out my job.
"Money doesn't grow on trees!"
Now I can finally reply, Some of them got GOLD leaves!!!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
almost neo-alchemy, this would be great though, mining has really destroyed a lot of the environment around my state (wisconsin), most people think mining is physically diging out ore deposits and whatnot, actually IIRC current mining tecniques involve pumping poisins into the soil that deslove whatever minerals they want then they pump them back up and extract what they want
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I read an article in New Scientist several years ago about how the British authorities have planted a number of metal fixing plants in the vicinity of the Firth bridge to absorb the residue from the noxious paint used on the bridge.
The plant efficiently pumps arsenic from the soil and stores it in its leaves, where it can be easily harvested and disposed of.
Presumably, said plant is efficiently pumping arsenic from a Superfund site containing large amounts of..."disposed" arsenic!
Do I detect circular logic here?
WHERE THE HELL DO YOU DUMP THE PLANTS? (Another Superfund site?)
It's the choice of an old and tired generation!
Chew on this!
Feeling down? Don't stick around! Genetically Engineered Arsenic Tobacco - Jack Kervorkian Chew!
oh I forgot...
2. ???
3. Profit!
This is more along the lines of cleanup or bioremediation, where organic methods of agglutinating very disperse amounts of something dangerous (heavy metals, arsenic, etc. in the soil/aquifer/etc.) into larger, more manageable clumps without disposing of the substrate wholesale. The article mentions things like cleaning up oil spills with bacteria and removing toxic metals from soil. This isn't a technique to remove large, concentrated deposits of metals from the ground, it's actually much the opposite: it removes scattered, relatively small amounts from the environment in a way that facilitates their safe(r) disposal.
What I would like to know is how they plan to get the base minerals, considering soils have tyically minimal mineralization and the elements tend to be in very low concentrations.
I would think that this would only work for rare earth elements and the like, not so good for base metals.
Still, after seeing what mining does to the landscape, anything is better.
"I propose we leave math to the machines and go play outside" -- Calvin
Think of it! Now you can potentially go do your environmental duty and turn a profit. Bob Q Genesplicer buys up the rights to the tailings from a mine..and just goes out to harvest once per x time period.
They're right to be concerned about the spread of the genes, but if they were to tie in a sterility gene (the so-called terminator technology might be an example of this) very closely to the gene that adds this new behavior, I think we're really underway!
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
. . . or you'll end up like Stan here:
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http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_683401.htm
Does anyone have any more useful links than this one? I know it's in Nature, so there's probably not a free site that directly links the article, but are there any more brain heavy synopses of this article anywhere?
I am interested in several things:
1) what does the Arsenic turn into (chemically speaking). Does the plant change the chemical bonding? I think that most aresnic is stored as sodium arsenate (I could be wrong) if it changes it to something more managable, it would be much better than if it simply concentrates it. HOWEVER, concentrating it is, by itself, an incredible step forward. Period.
2) is it possible to seed these as "suicide" plants, EG: plants that produce no pollen or seeds?
hmmmm?
The plants are probably just a first step.
Obviously, you harvest the plants and cart them away once they have done their work.
You could burn the plants under controlled conditions and chemically extract the arsenic -- a metal, as I recall -- from the ash.
Even if you didn't burn 'em:
If the plants are really concentrating the stuff, you'll have far less waste to deal with. Say, ten tons of branches and leaves rather than one hundred tons of soil. They might still end up in barrels in dumps, but there will be far fewer barrels.
"...Some scientists even see the day when trees and grasses will be used to mine metals and minerals without disturbing the soil." That demonstrates why some people calling themselves 'scientists' should stick to their fields. Sucking up miniscule amounts of metals with plants would only deplete the 'crustal abundance' of minerals within the narrow range of plant roots, and the average American requires over 45,000 pounds of newly-mined minerals every year. I work in the mineral industry, and I am a scientist. This smells like a grant proposal that got by someone. Suckers!
Quite the reverse, I am quite positive these species have been engineered to clean landfills of heavy metals that are otherwise very difficult to extract. There is no other direct reason to engineer plants other than the mining benefit. The mining benefit is very likely commercially, but definately politically, secondary to cleaning (often suburban) areas of waste.
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
What we need in Oz is a tree that can stand high salinity and absorb some of the excess salt to help fix the problems caused by over irrigation. It's going to take a very long time to fix with natural plants.
The topic of this article is highly misleading. One would think plants were capable of mining for metals like iron, copper or various mined good, while the real use is cleaning up the soil from any heavy-metal contamination, such as the arsenic example. A more practical use in the local neighbohrhood for this would be to clean the ground around older gas stations or clean the ground of heavy-metals where there used to be a steel mill.
Hate me!
The first group of researchers added a gene from the E. coli bacteria and one from soybeans to make Arabidopsis thaliana, a distant relative of cabbage, develop its taste for arsenic.... The plant efficiently pumps arsenic from the soil and stores it in its leaves, where it can be easily harvested and disposed of.
Oh, sure, as if cabbage didn't taste bad enough already....
This is nothing new. Many companies have been doing this for a very long time.
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Here is a
http://science.slashdot.org/science/02/09/3
Ocen Arks International:
http://www.oceanarks.org/LM/Frame
a decent Wired.com article:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,
also see: http://www.berea.edu/sens/living_machine.htm
The Buckminster Fuller Institute
http://www.bfi.org/Trimtab/fall00/living_machin
This UK company
http://www.ltluk.com/
a Battelle Enviro Update article
http://www.battelle.org/Environment/publ
An article from HUD
http://www.hud.gov/local/boi/ie100601.html
The notice from the 1993 confrence on living machines:
http://www.ibiblio.org/london/agriculture/biore
Some info from LSU
http://www.biology.lsu.edu/webfac/cramcharan
Rockbourne Enviro
http://www.rockbourne.net/WastewaterTreat
Korte Organica
http://www.korte.hu/technologies/living_machine
This Time.com article
http://www.time.com/time/reports/environ
One method of removing heavy metals from a heavily polluted area(old factory site, for example) is to plant the entire grounds with trees. Soft pines are often used, for example. As the trees grow and absorb minerals through their roots, they take up almost all of the polluting metals over time and store them in their needles and bark.
There are companies that can be hired to plant and maintain small "cleaning forests" over a period of ten to twenty years, to make sure no one else is harvesting the lumber, and to treat or remove trees that become ill. It's actually very useful, a cheap, efficient(compared to digging up the soil and chemically treating it), and very clean method of getting dangerous substances out of the ground.
Oh, wait, they already do that. Um, yay! ;P
My deviantArt site
Why am I reminded of command and conquer, and the concept of Tiberium?
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As for the Monarch, the gold color on its chrysalis "comes from cardenolides in the milkweed that larvae eat." Sorry.
If I recall correctly, they've been using sunflowers in New Jersey to clean up superfund sites. Could there be a way, therefore, to use such plants for nuclear waste/contamination areas, for later harvest and recycling/reclamation/disposal? After all, certain instances of radioactive waste includes metallic compounds.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
in the original C&C there were plants that did this (at least i was always led to believe they were plants)--they extracted all manner of valuable metals and secreted it in the form of crystals...mind you those things were highly toxic and energetic enough that humans would combust upon prolonged exposure but hey, its just a game= =)
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
They've used metal mining as a cover story before ...
One simple rule for its versus it's
Unless they made the plant somehow resistant to arsenic, aren't we basically engineering it to commit suicide for our benefit? Granted, it is just a plant, but aren't there some unsettling moral connotations of this? There has never been an organism that has acted in this way. This plant is probably the first decidedly non-human "unnatural" life on this planet.
Uhh.. you need a nuclear reactor to enrich Uranium. I don't know of too many plants that can get that hot. There's a big difference between sapping up Arsenic and forcing neutrons into an atom's nucleus.
There's a short article on the findings and also some mention of the concept of phytomining.
"...Some scientists even see the day when trees and grasses will be used to mine metals and minerals without disturbing the soil." ...That sounds suspiciously familiar to this one scheme I've heard of that people apparently have been doing for centuries. They plant these special "seeds" in the ground that grow and harvest tons of minerals. When the plant is big enough and the time is right, they EAT it. Fugging weirdos.
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A large amount of our water problems have to do with burning fossil fuels with heavy metals. Why? Plants have always been pretty at good at absorbing nasty stuff like arsenic, mercury, etc. We burn the coal/oil/whatever, and that stuff goes into the atmosphere, gets absorbed by clouds, and then gets into the water cycle. Then we find this stuff in the our water and fish.
It gets in the fish because algae and water lilys also absorb the metals pretty well. Then fish eat the algae...Note that if you live in the Northeast US (like I used to), you can't eat freshwater fish anymore. All the lakes (with a few exceptions) are polluted with mercury, even the ones far far away from industrial factories.
So modifying plants to absorb more heavy metals is just going to cause problems for 1) future generations (granted it takes a helluva long time for plants to die and make coal, but still...), and 2) current people who hunt for food (like when Mr. Deer comes over and nibbles on that arsenic-laden blueberry bush).
Since when is taking toxic material out of the ground and letting it sit on the surface (where rain washes it into rivers, animals eat it...people eat it) a good idea? Maybe it will keep it out of aquafers in the short term, but it is still going to cause more problems than it's worth.
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
ok, so the article claims the cabbagey plant can absorb aresenic into its leaves, and then the plant can be disposed of. How? Isn't that how arsenic got there in the first place?
I suppose they would seal it into steel drums, or maybe bury it, but then you end up with a giant pile of supertoxic waste instead of minute amounts of it all over.
i dooon't get it.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
and there are currently two main uses for it, cleanup of heavy and toxic metals eg arsnic, lead, platinum etc and mining. I was listening to the CBC the other night and they had a representative from a Canadian mining company on talking about their pilot for the first commercial scale mining using hyperaccumulating plants to remove extra metal from mining trailings. He estimated that a very large scale deployment of a certain species that was a natural hyperacculutaor for whatever they were mining would increase their yields by aprox 5 percent which came out to some 10K tons a year! Not only that but the plant also accumulated some heavy metals used in the mining process and so would help clean up the site.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Mel Chin had already successfully done this in his work entitled "Revival Field" at the Pig's Eye Landfill in St. Paul Minnesota. Here he traps heavy metals and toxins in the soil leaving it untainted when he is done harvesting... at least that is the goal.. and so far it has been somewhat sucessfull. You can read more about it here satorimedia.com. I'm sure there are other articles out there about his research, but I found him in one of my text books entitled Art on the Edge and Over by Linda Weintraub....
We could all benefit from my education.
Plants already suck up arsenic from the ground. In fact, garden vegetables which have absorbed toxic levels of heavy metals are a common cause of chronic illness in areas with contaminated soils. The fact that plants do this in the first place make it relatively easy to crank the tendency up a few notches.
Toxic heavy metals already pervade our ecosystem, generally in concentration that make it difficult to remove them. As has already been stated, anything that can take these low concentration (but still dangerous) contaminations and turn them into high concentrations that can be safely removed somewhere is a good thing.
Arsenic can't find its way into the ecosystem in a "macro scale" unless its there in the first place...the soil and the groundwater are very much part of the ecosystem. But in this case, presumable some, in fact large amounts, of the arsenic has been removed when the plants are harvested.
If the test sites are heavily contaminated in the first place, you can bet local ecosystem poisoning has already happened.
As far as "mining" via plants...do you think really think that strip mining would be LESS hard on the environment? Unless the world magically reverts to the stone age, people are going to want metals, and until something better are is introduced, there's little incentive for them to stop doing what works for them already...
You plant the arsenic loving cabbage and harvest and concentrate some of the leaves. This *removes* arsenic from that local ecosystem.
You don't plant the arsenic loving cabbage and the arsenic stays in that local ecosystem. The levels may be lower than for insects nibbling on the cabbage, but it's permanent and pervasive.
In concentrated pure form, the toxic chemicals are *valuable*. The problem is when they are low concentrations and mixed with a lot of other toxic chemicals.
Besides, plants make some of the more interesting toxic chemicals themselves.
and all the other woodland creatures. Also, can't forget about the insects that naturally feed on these plants.
It's easy to keep humans from eating these plants; however, there are always the ones that don't read the warning signs and jump the barbed wire fence we'll read about in the Darwin awards.
But what will happen to the animals, insects, fungi, bacteria, etc that will feed on these plants?
And what happens when the leaves fall off the trees? When they decay won't they contaminate the soil
If I drive fast enough at the red light, it'll appear green.
Ever since I read in the World Book Encyclopedia when I was a kid that the ocean contains something like 9 pounds of gold for every man, woman and child I've wondered when somebody would find a way to get it. I know people have been working on it, and I had heard about evidence of a naturally occuring gold-fixing bacterium before. Apparently, some ores contain gold structures that look like organs or excrement from bacteria.
Just Google using gold/ocean/bacteria as search terms and you'll find some interesting stuff.
This is why I laugh when some idiot on CNBC says "gold is a good investment". Not only has it been a crappy investment historicly, but mining tech is always improving. One good breakthrough to get the gold out of seawater and poof! It's just that gold has been doing well lately, so now you've actually got people pitching gold the way they pitched dot-coms.
However, I can understand why the gold stocks make sense. When the price of gold goes up just a little, pits that were worthless suddenly become valuable. Paradoxicly, companies with low grade ore pits actually get a bigger boost (of course it works painfully in the other direction when the price of gold falls).
So, if you don't believe that companies that rely on a valuable commodity won't find a way to make it cheaper coughChipFabscough! then by all means buy gold and sock it away in your basement.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
What? No you don't. All you need is a centrifuge. All the isotopes of uranium you need to make a bomb are naturally occurring.
make fertilizer, so we can grow more plants, so we can make more fertilizer, so we can. . .
Isn't this what the ad said was wrong with cocaine?
KFG
Just build big bioreactors and feed megatons of topsoil into them. The end product should be clean soil and very, very radioactive [dead] bacteria, which can be treated as concentrated high level waste.
(This would also come in handy in parts of Nevada and at the US military nuclear sites, where the problem is dealing with radioisotopes dispersed in the soil and ground water.)
Arthur C. Clarke described a "golden reef," in which several species of coral were genetically engineered to extract gold from sea water, in his book "Imperial Earth," published in 1976. In a rather detailed passage, he describes his corals as being up to ten per cent gold, but states that the gold extraction feature weakened the health of the coral, so that they suffered from parasitism and disease and required regular gardening and maintenance to remain viable.
You can either gather the plants and burn them to concentrate the heavy metals or compost them and replant in the compost to concentrate the metals even more. The great thing about the plants is that they filter a lot of contaminated water (which essentially ends up as distilled rain) over their lifetime with out burning oil for industrial processing or using industrial chemicals. And it is cheep too.
In developed areas there is a lot of lead contamination around old houses (lead paint) and cities (leaded gasoline), or mercury from florescent lights. Uranium from depleted bullets (which turn into a power aerosol upon impact) has just as strong a organiometallic effect as arsenic.
All of these things can turn you madder than a hatter (this is an old phrase resulting from the use of mercury in the hat making industry at one time. Or as dull as a printer (lead pigment used in news paper ink until the unions forced a change). But it depends on which part of the brain dies first.
These heavy metals have been used in a variety of things that people bring into their homes. In fact a large number of cosmetics are exceedingly poisonous because there are no regulations on what can be in them. Ever wonder what the active ingredient is in those hair dyes for men whose beards are turning white, its lead acetate. Remember, you are what you eat, drink and absorb through your skin. Moonshine isn't the only source of lead poisoning these days!
Perhaps the best cyanide fact to keep in mind is that before you die of cyanide poisoning, you'll probably get extremely ill and at that point you can still be saved by drinking some sodium thiosulphate. Almost any photo shop will have some. If you're working with cyanide keep some handy. It's easy to come by.