The 2nd December is designated in India as National Pollution Day. On this tragic day in 1984, a horrific accident occurred at the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. Toxic gases released in the accident killed some 25,000 people in the surrounding area.
Industry brings many blessings, but the pollution it brings behind in the scourge of mankind, and also all living organisms. Industry results in production of toxic gases and water polluted with toxic organic molecules and heavy metals. Factories have a duty to restrict their polluting activities, and take this responsibility seriously. One of the most dramatic exceptions is a true story of hexavalent chromium pollution of the groundwater around Hinkley, California, dramatized in the Julia Roberts movie “Erin Brockovich” (Steven Soderbergh, Universal Pictures, 2000).
But this leaf is not about the polluters, but about one of the ways to repair the damage. With soiland water pollution, some plants can tolerate moderate pollution enough to providean entry point for toxic substances to enter the food chain. But here lies apartial remedy, to use the plants but stop the feeding chain! In a process pioneered by researcher Ilya Raskin of Rutgers University, pollution-tolerant plants are plantedwhere they can take up the pollutants. They are then harvested and taken off for safe disposal elsewhere. The process is known as #phytoremediation. The plants selected can be any plant species able to grow quickly and to take up the toxic materials.
Phytoremediation is being used in the areas surrounding Chernobyl, Ukraine, to absorb radioactive caesium and strontium pollution from the nuclear accident of 1986, but it is along project. The downside of phytoremediation is that it takes a long time and needs to be repeated over many growing seasons. On the other hand, phytoremediation has a huge cost advantage over mechanical removal and cleansing of polluted soils, a massive undertaking that is usually far too expensive to consider.
But is phytoremediation plant abuse? Personally I think it is a good answer for correcting Environment abuse, and the plants don’t seem to object!
Further reading/viewing
☣ Wikipedia (2023) "Bhopal disaster”, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bhopal_disaster&oldid=1187602342
☣Black H(1995). Absorbing possibilities: phytoremediation. Environmental healthperspectives, 103(12), 1106–1108. https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.951031106
