Fungi May Help With Asbestos Cleanups

Makarand writes "Asbestos cleanups are tricky as disturbed soil can disperse and make asbestos fibers airborne. Now scientists are developing bioremediation measures that involve allowing iron-gathering fungi to grow on asbestos contaminated soil and render the asbestos harmless according to this article in Nature. The toxicity of asbestos is partly due to its iron content and microorganisms can help by removing it from the asbestos. Also, the fungi bind asbestos fibers into a web making it difficult for them to become airborne. Identifying the asbestos-attacking genes and introducing them into other microorganisms may be the next step in fighing asbestos pollution."

Comments

Good news

[kruetz]

This sounds like a great but increasingly rare achievement - scientists getting somewhere that actually benefits the world (although I thought that asbestos problems had been mostly solved by removing it from all buildings, etc). I'm sick and tired of reading in the papers about all sorts of trivial or "pop-science" experiments being done by scientists in a last-ditch effort to either get funding or exposure.

Imagine if they could extend this to handle diseases and other toxic chemicals - it could spell a much safer world for everyone. No more anthrax-in-envelopes killing people! Far less dangerous workplaces at chemical production plants. Way to go!

Re:Good news

[sl3xd]

This sounds like a great but increasingly rare achievement - scientists getting somewhere that actually benefits the world

It's precicely that kind of attitude that gives science a bad name.

It's also rubbish. Science has done more to help humanity than you realize, and in more ways than you choose to believe. Scientists are not about destroying the world, but they are about discovering as much as possible about it, in as inobtrusively as possible.

Then, if somebody finds a use for whatever they discover, so be it. But that's the business end of the deal, and has little to do with science, or understanding.