May 05, 2008
Mushrooms, Already Known for Their Health Benefits, May Also Be a Cure for Environmental Ailments
The nutritional and health benefits of mushrooms are perhaps now widely known, but mushrooms as a cure for environmental ailments? One California town believes so.
Fort Bragg, California, located about 130 miles north of San Francisco, has a toxic site full of dioxin on property that was once the location of a Georgia-Pacific lumber mill. Mushrooms have already shown success in cleaning up toxic sites, such as oil spills, but cleaning up dioxin is something new. According to news reports on the town, some residents have decided that if mushrooms are good at cleaning up other toxic substances, why not dioxin?
Fort Bragg is located in California's Mendocino County and while the idea may seem a bit odd in some counties, not so in Mendocino County - the first county in the nation to legalize medical marijuana and to ban genetically-modified crops and animals. The push to clean up the toxic site results from the fact that failure to do so could cost the town a $4.2 million grant from the California Coastal Conservancy for a coastal trail.
According to news reports, the town had two main options. One was to haul away the soil to a landfill about 200 miles away, but this would require about 1,000 truckloads. The other option was to bury it in a large, plastic-lined landfill. Not liking either option, residents sought advice from Paul E. Stamets, author of Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World.
His advice for residents was this - put mushroom plots on the contaminated soil, cover it with straw and leave it be. Stamets' theory is that the mushroom spawn release a fine, threadlike web called mycelium that secretes enzymes "like little Pac-Mans that break down molecular bonds," he said. The toxins then fall apart and disappear.
How much of the dioxin the mushrooms can actually remove and how long it will take are not yet known, but it looks as if Fort Bragg residents are willing to be a test site for this potential use of mushrooms. Test mushroom plots are planned for parts of the toxic site later this year. Mushrooms may yet turn out to be not only the world's super food, but also the environment's super cleaner.
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