The Great Lakes suffer from all kinds of pollution, but among the most dangerous pollutants from industrial waste are mercury, cadmium, and zinc. Researchers at Ohio State University are perfecting a way to clean up those heavy metals…. using algae. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen explains:
Transcript
The Great Lakes suffer from all kinds of pollution, but among the most dangerous pollutants from industrial waste are mercury, cadmium, and zinc. Researchers at Ohio State University are perfecting a way to clean up those heavy metals – using algae. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen explains:
Picture using algae as a sponge. The one-cell
plants attach themselves to the polluting metals…you pull them out of the
water…squeeze out the metals in an acid solution….and re-use the algae
sponge 30 times. Researcher Richard Sayre has genetically altered the
algae to sop up more pollution than ever:
“We’ve improved their ability to sequester and bind these heavy metals by a factor of five.”
Sayre stresses – the algae itself won’t be put
into the lakes free-floating …and it won’t even be living.
“The metal-binding capacity is about three times greater when they’re dead than when they’re alive.”
The next step for Sayre…convincing a few cities to let him put this algae into pollution control equipment so he can prove to them it’s a cheap and effective way to stop industrial waste before it gets into waterways.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bill Cohen.