Microbe can eat toxic waste underground (NJ sinking into Atlantic)

USA Today ^ | 7/2/2003

[presidio9]

Scientists have identified a microbe that gobbles up toxic waste deep underground, offering a potential way to clean up a particularly nasty chemical that has contaminated the water underneath hundreds of the nation's industrial and military sites. Microbiologist Frank Loeffler said the bacterium, known as BAV1, was found in soil samples 20 feet down at a hazardous waste site in Oscoda, Mich. BAV1 flourishes in the packed earth where there is no oxygen, feeding off certain toxic compounds, he said.

[ctlpdad]

so the BAV1 must be naturally occuring stuff, and teh chemicals reall wont be in the ground longer than a disposable diaper in a lined landfill?
Looks interesting - will put a lot of people out of work if we really don't have to dig up vc's to treat them.

(i've heard by the way a newspaper or hotdog can last longer than a disposable diaper in lined landfills, but the enviro freaks still wig out about diapers)

[dasboot]

Andromeda Strain.

Remember how the mutated life form started eating the gaskets on the doors of the airliners?

Isn't nature doing the job..as evinced by the discovery? Why improve it?

UV light does a job on gaskets alone; imagine all your vinyl plastics decomposing cuz the microbe can be rendered aerobic. Sheesh!

A biological "House that Jack Built"?

[joesnuffy]

Toxic Waste eating microbes?
Run Hillary Run

[Hank Rearden]

The entire state of NJ will be one big all-you-can-eat buffet for these bugs.

[Myrnick]

So really it's a perfect system.

Famous last words...famous last words.

[shotgun]

Mr Vic: "Why do they call the New Jersey the Garden State?"

Gracie Lou Freebush: "Because Oil and Petro-chemical Refinery State wouldn't fit on the license plate."

[ctlpdad]

Now if we could just find something that would eat up the toxic lawyers!

[azhenfud]

All your plastics are belong to us....

[Libertarianize the GOP]

ping

[ken5050]

watch, next year the same scientist will report that the bacterium shits depleted uranium and pisses hydrochloric acid.....moral..."It's NOT nice to fool mother nature.."

[Mike Darancette]

However, this is the first one found that thrives on vinyl chloride underground.

What did the bacteria eat before there was vinyl chloride? What will it eat when the vinyl chloride is gone? Hope it doesn't get a taste for crude oil.

Evolution in action.

[Junior]

Evolution in progress...

[presidio9]

I thought there was no such thing as evolution.