[CPEO-MEF] TECHNOLOGY: Phytoremediation at Brookhaven Lab (NY)

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Brookhaven lab turns to trees to take out toxins

JENNIFER SMITH
Long Island Newsday (NY)
August 26, 2009

Inside a greenhouse at Brookhaven National Laboratory, a potential 
remedy for pollution from Long Island's industrial and military past 
grows in orderly rows.

Slender hybrid poplars planted earlier this year by Lee Newman, an 
associate biochemist at the lab, now stand at eye level. Bred to grow 
fast and thirsty, they can suck up groundwater fouled with industrial 
solvents and then break the toxins down inside the plant tissue.

The approach is called phytoremediation: using plants to contain, remove 
or destroy toxins. It's been used to help clean sites tainted by 
dry-cleaning fluid, heavy metals and gasoline - all common pollutants 
across Long Island.

From trees to vegetables and even ferns, different plants are used to 
address different environmental pollutants. And they do it "naturally," 
Newman said, "without having to resort to excavation and incineration of 
the contaminated material."

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.newsday.com/news/brookhaven-lab-turns-to-trees-to-take-out-toxins-1.1407532

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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