Extreme Bugs Found In Slag Dump

lonefox_illuminus writes "The world's most alkaline lifeforms are living in contaminated water in the U.S. These microbial little fellas are able to exist in an environment as harsh and toxic as caustic soda."

Extremophile bacteria everywhere

[G4from128k]

Extremophile bacteria [unsw.edu.au] are found in all sorts of extreme places. Some can live in jet fuel (they corrode the tanks and require antibiotics in jet fuel). Others live in the acidic high-temperature hotsprings in Yellowstone. And entire ecosystems thrive around the 600 degree F "black smokers" in deep-sea thermal vents.

Re:It goes to show . .

[RALE007]

Leroy_Brown242 wrote:

It goes to show that life can live anywhere it wants. The depth of the oceans, and the acidic worlds of a slag dump.

The slag dump in the story is not highly acidic, it's highly alkalinic. Acidic would be a ph lower than 7. Alkalinic is a ph higher than 7. The dump in the story was measured to be 12.8. If I remember correctly, highly acidic is a ph less than 3, and highly alkalinic is a ph greater than 10, thus the interest in these microbes that thrive in an environment that approaches a ph of 13.

phytoremediation

[theMerovingian]

It's called phytoremediation.

The plants function as a contaminant sink - they are capable of absorbing trace amounts of elements/minerals from the soil. If you harvest the biomass, then you collect some of the pollutants along with it.

It has been done in gold mine tailings with alfalfa: http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/research/highlig hts_archive/alfalfa.html [stanford.edu]

Although, I don't know if this is effective enough to warrant much commercial development. It works in small amounts, but I seriously doubt it is used for much other than to fob off the greenies.

A greenie website for more info: http://www.aibs.org/bioscience/bioscience-archive/ vol45/green.clean.html [aibs.org]