A little time ago I wrote about the amazing Earth healing powers of Mycelium or mushroom roots.
I said I’d dig about and report back my findings – well here’s what I’ve found out so far.
Paul Stamets carried out an experiment to clean up toxic waste using oyster mushroom spores; they created heaps that were contaminated with diesel and oils, they introduced bacteria to one heap and mycelium to another and also left one to it’s own devices. The results where compelling. The two heaps that didn’t have mycelium added, just turned into a putrid sludge, yet the one with the oyster mushroom spores added, after a couple of months had totally transformed into a mound of life. As the mycelium began to take hold and the mushrooms sprouted, then too came the insects and with that the birds and their droppings seeded the mound and the cycle of life began to take. All the while the mycelium was turning the contaminants (hydro-carbons) into life giving fungal sugars (carbohydrates).
Oyster Mushrooms Dealing with Contaminated waste
But how then does this become a possible solution to the oil pits in Ecuador and anywhere else for that matter? Well an oil pit is vastly different in make-up to a mound of earth that’s contaminated with oil and diesel; so if you where to employ mycelium, you’d have to create the right conditions for it to prosper. Firstly, i’d extract the main body of oil from the pit and take it somewhere to be intensely treated. Then in the remaining bowl I think you have to add considerable amounts of organic matter and fibrous material e.g. soil, grass, leaves, paper, wood shavings etc. etc. to create a giant compost heap. Then add your mycelium and let nature do it’s thing and it would of course take along time to completely re-mediate or clean-up the pit.
Now these are just my ideas and thoughts based on what I’ve learned over the last month or so. They are not endorsed by anyone and are totally unproven! But it does seem like a reasonable approach and it certainly would not cause anymore harm to the effected areas.
I have the words of Terry Hazen, one of the worlds leading bioremediation authorities, ringing in my ears, he said “Having lived in the tropics (Puerto Rico) and studied petroleum biodegradation, it should degrade quite readily, unless there is some other limiting parameter.” It appears surprisingly that the Earth is more than capable of cleaning up our mess (it’s had some practice i guess), and it’s commonplace to see toxic pits become a luscious oasis of life again. But in Ecuador there appears to be this limiting parameter that Terry refers to, so maybe there is a need to think outside the box in this circumstance.
Unfortunately, these pits are at the center of a protracted legal case that is really hampering any credible clean-up operation and is the result of even more wasteful human activity!
Respect and Peace
@dam
The Grape Vine