Posted on 03/13/2016 5:31:02 AM PDT by huldah1776
Unintended consequence: plastic poop.
Very little plastic in my 65 Willys and some in the 82 CJ7.
There was a joke in Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia
The beach shore that was covered wit rock, rip rap technically, was affected by some sort of green algae. It was ugly and made the rock very slippery. They called a british consulting firm and they came to look at the shore line. They recommended application of a spray on solution to eat away the little green algae nodules.
The Saudi listened carefully and nodded approval and then said to the Brit with a straight face, we have another problem. Do you have anything to rid us of little brown Pakis?
Probably same concept, but different class of bacteria.
Crude is a mix of hydrocarbon (about C1- C50) mix of paraffinic, aromatic, asphalitc, and PNA's. The carbon bonds are mostly aliphatic in nature, and lend themselves easier to microbiological digestion.
PP, PET, PE ect., are polymers that are generally produced by olefinic feedstocks that are made in high temperatures and pressures which create very very long chain polymers that my nature are very stable and difficult to degrade.
Would have to be a whole different animal.
LOL, *priceless* !!
That shouldn't be a problem if you keep your car clean and dry. Bacteria require moisture to thrive.
Is that the one where someone sabotages someone’s toothbrush.. when the toothbrush is used, a few minutes later, that person’s guts fall out (while he was driving) (was made in early-mid ‘80s)?
I have been searching for that movie for years.. I thought it had Barry Corbin in it, but I can’t seem to find any movies like that with him :/
There already is a cure, in 1951 the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded for the discovery of the cause of cancer.
To find out a cure read, The Ph Mircle by Dr. Robert Young. He also has a more recent work that has more info but the title escapes me.
I am not so sure about that. If it can eat a ~C50 paraffin it can probably eat many polymers. Just start cleaving it anywhere along the chain.
There are natural bacteria which eat rubber, so long-chain molecules are not out of the question.
Andromeda Strain
“A military satellite returns to Earth. Aerial surveillance reveals that everyone in Piedmont, Arizona, the town closest to where the satellite landed, is apparently dead. The base commander suspects the satellite returned with an extraterrestrial organism and recommends activating Wildfire, a protocol for a government-sponsored team that counters extraterrestrial biological infestation.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain
In 1973 I read a novel about the consequences of a plastic eating bacteria. It ain’t pretty folks. Every valve, switch, car parts, light fixture, rocket booster, gasoline pump, circuit board, etc......has plastic parts. Now think about bacteria getting loose in that environment?
Make a serious envirowackjob weapon of mass destruction, eh? Doesn’t it eat only particular elements of the plastic?
I doubt if this is really new. They use bugs to clean up gas stations. They're all aimed at petroleum products...I think.
So did milk...
It sounds as though they discovered a naturally occurring bacteria.
“Wonderful! Now , please, someone find the cure for cancer.”
It’s out there, but there is far more money in treatment than cures.
The novel was called “Mutant 59, The Plastic-Eaters”. By Kit Peddler.
Exact same scenario. Biologists discover and then mass culture plastic eating bacteria which get loose and adapt to countermeasures. The whole world collapses with only third world societies surviving.
Average number of carbon molecules in most polymer chains is over a 1000. Also realize that bond structure induced with heat and pressure makes it that additionally hard to degrade stable polymers. Much more than any parafinnic or even PNA's.
That is why their true half-life is near infinity, as even as the 400-1000 year half life structural research data fails to reveal is that these polymers through mostly though photo degradation just becomes smaller pieces of their former self.
I know quire a bit about bio-remediation, and knowing how stable polymers are, I can see the resources (power, additives, equipment) making this cost prohibitive.
It will not be like you throw bags and bottles into a bio-soup. There will have to be significant grinders and comminutors to disperse these polymers into fine particulates, so that optimum surface areas are treated.
Think this is nice in theory, but not so sure in practical application.
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