
Mining Metals Using Plants and Trees? 207
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.
Let's just hope it's not a fruit tree... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let's just hope it's not a fruit tree... (Score:2)
Re:Let's just hope it's not a fruit tree... (Score:2)
Re:Let's just hope it's not a fruit tree... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Let's just hope it's not a fruit tree... (Score:1)
what about the Easter Bunny... (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Re:what about the Easter Bunny... (Score:2, Interesting)
> trees? When they decay won't they contaminate the
> soil
#1) The soil is already contaminated (that's where the plants are getting it from).
#2) Hopefully they'll use plants that can be easily harvested & removed from the environment (like cabbage). I think that's the point.
Re:what about the Easter Bunny... (Score:2)
I guess we will end up eating it somehow, but probably we consume a quite miniscule portion of it, probably less than what is in our water supply now anyway.
Already happens? (Score:4, Insightful)
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!
Re:Already happens? (Score:2)
Re:Already happens? (Score:5, Informative)
There are 0.6 mg/g hydrogen cyanide (HCN) in dried apple seeds. Cite [cornell.edu]
Natural cyanide is called Amygdalin, chemically it is bonded to a glucose and readily converts to hydrogen cyanide in the body. Herbal places sell it as a miracle cure for cancer. "Amygdalin Tablets & Ampoules www.cytopharma.com" This was an ad that came up during a google search related to cyanide.
50 to 100 mg of cyanide is a lethal dose. Cite [emedicine.com]
This is about a half-cup to a full cup (80-160grams) of dried apple seeds.
An interesting site on cyanide. [charter.net]
Related:
Smoking of cigarettes commonly releases cyanide. Tobacco smokers have a mean blood cyanide level of 0.4 mcg/cc, which is 2.5 times greater than the level in nonsmokers. Cite [emedicine.com]
Re:Already happens? (Score:2)
if you want to get rid of someone - hold an apple seed eating contest at your next party!
More Cyanide facts, could be helpful someday. (Score:2)
Re:More Cyanide facts, could be helpful someday. (Score:2)
Re:Already happens? (Score:2)
Re:Already happens? (Score:2)
The metals in question are elements. Unless you can geneticly engineer the plant to also be a nuclear reactor you are rather stuck with them.
Re:Already happens? (Score:2)
With heavy metals it can be difficult to find a compound which isn't harmful to living organisms. Especially amongst apex predators who tend to wind up getting the higest doses.
Effectivly you'd need for the plant to be able to create a stable organic compound which is undigestable by anything which might eat the plant.
Re:Already happens? (Score:2)
Re:Already happens? (Score:2)
Re:Already happens? (Score:1)
Re:Already happens? (Score:2)
Which is easier said than done. We already have problems with genetically modified crop plants winding up as weeds in other farmers' fields. So it's highly likely that such plants would "escape" and quite possibly form hybrids with other plants of the same species.
My mother always said... (Score:2, Funny)
Now I can finally reply, Some of them got GOLD leaves!!!
Uh, excuse me.. (Score:1)
Cool (Score:2)
Re:Cool (Score:2)
The sad thing is that the amount of soil they ruin for a gram of gold is enormous. IIRC its like couple grams of gold per ton of soil. In order to get the gold out they pour arsenic or cyanide (cant remember which) through the soil.
Near carson city nevada there are still large pools of this shit just sitting there.
Re:Cool (Score:2)
METAL FIXING PLANTS (Score:2, Informative)
Dangerous to the eco-system? (Score:1)
Re:Dangerous to the eco-system? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gotta love those MIT brains... (Score:2, Insightful)
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?)
Re:Gotta love those MIT brains... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, you pump arsenic from a disposal site, but the arsenic in that waste will probably be low concentration (just ppm in solids is considered bad).
Imagine that the plant sucks up *all* the arsenic from the soil, and *just* the arsenic. Thousands of tons of crap, which contain a few hundred pounds of arsenic, all of which goes into leaves. You then harvest the plants, put them into compost, shovel out a nice barrel full of arsenic into a secured container for burial, and have your nice thousands of tons of crap cleaned of arsenic. All the arsenic is still there, it's just become a smaller, more manageable problem.
Arsenic is an *element* (although what most people consider arsenic is Arsenolite, As2O3. Arsenic as As metal is pretty rare to find naturally), until you get that whole alchemy thing going and you transmute it into iron, there are no decent forms of arsenic that are completely safe. Everything is about concentration and containment.
Re:Gotta love those MIT brains... (Score:1)
It does not even have to be a problem, but rather a resource. Perhaps arsenic is not that useful, but any metal certainly is.
Tor
Re:Gotta love those MIT brains... (Score:2, Informative)
The issue with Arsenic metal is that it very easily oxidizes back to As2O3 again.
I'm not disagreeing, I'm just saying that the supply of arsenic mega-outstrips its current demand.
Follow the logic train with me, please... (Score:1)
Random insects come and nibble at the tree. They burrow holes in the bark. They feed on the roots. These insects ingest the arsenic you are removing, and... insert it into the ecosystem.
Birds eat the insects from the tree, concentrating the arsenic inside themselves. Mosquitoes feed on the birds. Birds of prey or, perhaps snakes, eat the birds and their eggs. Leaves from the tree are blown off by a strong storm, landing in a nearby lake, and contaminating it with arsenic.
Arsenic finds its way into the ecosystem on a macro scale, and starts wreaking havoc.
Plants are the foundation of the ecosystem. Using them to harvest toxic chemicals is a BAD IDEA. You can never keep the area completely quarantined. You can never ensure that no insects or animals will feed upon the plants as they are growing.
If this ever comes to pass, expect to see local ecosystem poisoning on a massive scale around the test sites.
Re:Follow the logic train with me, please... (Score:3, Informative)
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...
Re:Follow the logic train with me, please... (Score:2)
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.
Re:Gotta love those MIT brains... (Score:3, Informative)
MIT did not just think this up. On my desk I have Volume 1, Issue 1 (March, 1999) of the International Journal of Phytoremediation (ISSN15522-6514). The science of phytoremediation is the study on how plants and there associated rhizosphere microbial communities deal with contaminants.
The science of phytoremediation is not new. The US military has studied it for years as a method to clean up metal contaminated soils at gun ranges. One of the problems of phytoremediation with inorganic contaminants (such as lead or aresnic) is what to do with the plants after the remediation program. They can be just as hard to dispose of as the metal contaminated soil. I believe the lead concentrations in one barley crop was so high that they sold the "harvest" to a smelter!!
Be Nice. Re:Gotta love those MIT brains... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Be Nice. Re:Gotta love those MIT brains... (Score:5, Insightful)
Riddle me this batman, which of these two cases presents a harder clean-up problem: 100 kg of lead powdered into a fine dust and bound to the soil as various metalic salts, or a 100 kg brick of lead? The problem that is trying to be addressed here is large-scale soil contamination, where the toxic compounds are distributed and diffuse. The original title to this slashdot story (in the grand slashdot tradition) is completely misleading about the goals here, a better title would have been something like "Using plants to concentrate soil contamination for further processing" but that did not have the same tabloid appeal I guess.
At some point someone should to a bit of examination of past slashdot stories and give the rest of us a bit of feedback on which slashdot editors actually read the articles they are linking to and have the brain cells necessary to understand the content of these links. While I dispair for the future any of the slashdot editors have in fields related to science and technology, they can always fall back to a career with the Weekly World News...
Re:Gotta love those MIT brains... (Score:1)
Incidentally, non-engineered plants do this as well. Populus (aspen and the like) is particularly good at it.
Re:Gotta love those MIT brains... (Score:1)
F34nor
Marketing Idea (Score:4, Funny)
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!
Re:Marketing Idea (Score:2)
Re:Marketing Idea (Score:1)
Re:Marketing Idea (Score:1)
Re:Marketing Idea (Score:1)
Daddy... These smell like grandma...
Re:Marketing Idea (Score:2)
In short, it'd be an utterly terrible thing to happen.
Words of Caution (Score:1)
Critical Values ('there are no Monotone Values in Biology' G. Bateson Mind & Nature '
homeostatsis
runaway
positive feedback (sex and death)
negative feedback
good luck
This isn't really mining (Score:2, Informative)
From a mining perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
lots of uses (Score:2)
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!
Just watch out for the Silver Tree . . . (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_683401.htm
Re:Just watch out for the Silver Tree . . . (Score:1)
Speaking of politicians ingesting heavy metals, didn't Abraham Lincoln take mercury pills?
*sound of keyboard chattering*
Oh yeah, he did [nationalgeographic.com].
Just like the elves in Warcraft 3??? (Score:1)
Time to resign!
Bacteria that "breathe" heavy metals (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Bacteria that "breathe" heavy metals (Score:2)
Re:Bacteria that "breathe" heavy metals (Score:2)
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.
Anyone else see that this is an USA Today article? (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Lead and Butterflies (Score:1)
Also isn't it the Monarch Butterfly that deposits 24k gold bands on the outside of it's chrysalis?
I think we as a species are doing a very poor job of taking advantage of some of the biology going on around us.
We're not seeing the forest through the trees so to speak.
Re:Lead and Butterflies (Score:2)
As for the Monarch, the gold color [learner.org] on its chrysalis "comes from cardenolides in the milkweed that larvae eat." Sorry.
A Demonstration of Ignorance. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:A Demonstration of Ignorance. (Score:2)
Wuut? Cleter. I think I'm gonna try out that new fangled calcumalator I bawwt last year. Lemme se. foooorty-fiyve thousand, wheh! that's a biggun, hit that there divide key, how many days in a year, Cleter? 365? Is dat right. Alright. Where wuz I. Right. That divide button. And three-hunndrid-sixty-fiyve! Holly, hell, Cleter! The avrage 'merican eats 128 pounds a food a day. I'll be. I ate that much, I wouldn't be crappin' for a week, now would I?
Yeee haww.
C//
Re:A Demonstration of Ignorance. (Score:2)
It's an average figure... obviously some Americans will be using billions of pounds of newly mined minerals (you know, people who own steel mills, oil refineries and so forth) then selling it on to the rest of the country. Some of those will be shipyards, auto factories, civil engineers and so on, each of which will sell on its products.
What is the ratio of the weight of the minerals in a skyscraper to the weight of the workers in that skyscraper? What about a ship? Even an ordinary SUV is a few thousand pounds of minerals. 45000 lbs/person is not an unreasonable figure at all.
Re:A Demonstration of Ignorance. (Score:2)
That is an amazing stat. This is the raw ore you are talking about?
Re:A Demonstration of Ignorance. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A Demonstration of Ignorance. (Score:2, Informative)
Salinity (Score:2, Interesting)
Misleading. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:1)
Talk about wasted effort! (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, sure, as if cabbage didn't taste bad enough already....
hmmm... (Score:1, Funny)
This is nothing new (Score:4, Informative)
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
The Biotech/Nanotech Century Begins. (Score:1)
I dream of landfills being mined by Von Neuman Machines and gene taylored bacteria. I of the silica trees of Naussca cleaning the plutonium out of the soil. I dream of the darkness between the stars.
F34nor
-If we stay on this rock we're all going to die.
This is already done to clean polluted sites (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Vitamin deficiency (Score:1)
Sea life (Score:2)
Oh, wait, they already do that. Um, yay! ;P
I can hardly wait... (Score:1)
Tiberium (Score:2)
How about toxic waste disposal? (Score:2)
Been playing alot of Command and Conquer (Score:2)
The CIA may be involved (Score:2)
Suicide Tree? (Score:2)
Can't wait till these "break out" and become weeds (Score:1)
"Sorry Dad! I left it outside in the rain - the moss got to it and chewed up all the sheetmetal!"
Scientists are reporting that they have... (Score:1)
"We've had success with a number of elements", reports Dr. Grimm of the University of California at Berkeley, "but we've had the greatest success with metals, especially nonreactive metals." His competitor at Sandia National Labs, Dr. Anderson, isn't quite as confident. "Golden egg laying geese! That's just the stuff of fairytales".
Nickel mining proven using Alyssum plants (Score:2, Informative)
There's a short article [canadianmi...ournal.com] on the findings and also some mention of the concept of phytomining.
Old idea (Score:2)
Seems dumb (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Tiberian Sun! (Score:1)
disposed of? (Score:2)
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.
It's called Phytoremediation (Score:2)
This was already done by an artist..... Mel Chin (Score:2, Interesting)
This Is Why I Laugh At Goldbugs (Score:2)
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.
So we can use plants to mine minerals, so we can: (Score:2)
Isn't this what the ad said was wrong with cocaine?
KFG
Just what Chernobyl needs (Score:2)
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 thought of this, too (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not just over there. (Score:2, Informative)
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!
Re:Odd (Score:1)
Of course, this will probably produce tons of toxic wastes for the environmentalists to bitch about. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Re:Control? (Score:1)
Re:Control? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Night Elves. (Score:1)