Skip to main content

Will Mushrooms be our Ultimate Hero?

    With the continuation of pollutants entering our environment, starting with soil, creates a huge impact as we rely on soil for vegetation and agriculture purposes. With contaminants seeping into soil specifically petroleum, our livestock and crops would be affected, affecting us in the end as we eat them including other soil dependent organisms. Decreasing contaminates in the soil goes through a process called bioremediation, being the most effective way of removing pollutants in soil. How would this work though, what machine can do such a thing? That’s where mushrooms come into play, specifically Agaricomycetes mushrooms. In this study different concentrations of spent mushroom compost were tested in removing petroleum in contaminated soil with or without added soil enriching compounds.  By increasing the amount of mushroom concentration, the lower amount of petroleum was found in soil after. With 10% of spent mushroom compost and fertilizer removed 65% of total petroleum hydrocarbons, so with the added 10% of SMC, contaminated soil with petroleum was seen to degrade over a short span so bioremediation did increase with the addition of mushrooms. By using Agaricomycetes for the degradation of petroleum contaminated soils, not only is this an environmentally friendly technique but by using mushrooms to combat pollutants from entering our soils will be a good sustainable way for farmers etc. to clean up/repair the quality of their soils. The positive impact of using Agaricomycetes to reduce pollutants in soil is environmentally friendly that won’t affect anything negatively as it is a natural process of decomposition just faster and ecofriendly. Cost and benefits for whether a reduction of petroleum contaminants in our soil gets better can easily lower the probability of petroleum getting into water resources that can cause cancer and therefore increase our sustainability.

Reference

M. Maryam Mohammadi-Sichani, M. Mazaheri Assadi, A. Farazmand, M. Kianirad, A.M. Ahadi (2018). Bioremediation of soil contaminated cruel oil by Agaricomycetes.    

Comments

  1. Jessica MedinaNovember 18, 2020 at 2:32 PM

    This was a really interesting topic. I am curious on what properties of the mushroom species in the study allows for it to absorb the petroleum. Thus, I think the next thing to test would be if these mushroom species can survive in different types of environment settings and if there are any limitations in this study.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How are health-care and trees related?

By: Ritzuko Gutierrez  Unfortunately, there are flaws in our system. One of these flaws is the lack of access to high-quality, affordable health care in rural areas. People who suffer from this issue, may be incentivized to rely on illegal activities. For example, illegal logging in order to get cash to pay health care needs. Tropical forests are mainly affected. The loss is greater than gain and it leads to a change in landscapes, livelihoods, biodiversity, and climate change. Providing high-quality health care to rural communities with limited resources and income options living nearly a tropical rainforest benefits both conservation and human health. Globally, 35% of protected areas are managed by local communities and when designing a conservation program, they are rarely considered in it. Although, this idea has benefits for humans and the environment, it also has its negative consequences. When applying, incentive-based conservation approaches, it can either go well or bad. B...
1 comment
Read more

Oil Spills: 3D graphene

 By: Mary Aguilar          Oil spills has become a very big problem and causing a big problem for marine life.  This study discuss the importance of how oil spills have been a problem, and a solution on how to prevent oil spills from occurring. The article talks about how 3D graphene materials can remove dyes from the water. The 3D graphene can absorb both oils and organic solvents with also many other dyes have been studied in this research. The study concludes that there is possible use for 3D graphene but like many studies there is always disadvantages because it can clean oil spills under water but it is unable to absorb nanomaterials. Therefore the 3D graphene needs improvement in order to be able to solve the problem of oil spills, because if this is able to work then marine life can be saved.  Figure 1: Different ways graphene can be synthesized.  Riaz, M.A., McKay, G., & Saleem, J. (2017). 3D graphene-based nanostructure...
1 comment
Read more

Is Hydroelectric Power actually a "Green" Energy Source?

Is Hydroelectric Power actually a "Green" Energy Source? Source: Tennessee Valley Authority (public domain) Greenhouse gases are gases that trap heat in the atmosphere, and the three major greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Natural sources of these gases consists of lakes, rivers, streams, and ponds as well. Lakes are environmentally beneficial because they are active, changing, and are important regulators of the three major greenhouse gases. That being said, lakes and reservoirs are known to be built for the purpose of generating power. So much so that water has been retained by dams that the global sea level rise has lowered approximately 0.02 inches per year in the span of 50 years. And since fossil fuels are not utilized to to produce hydroelectric power, lakes are known for their "green" energy sources alternative. Which is a common misconception because it is those lake and reservoirs that release powerful greenhouse gases into t...
Post a Comment
Read more