Good News, A MUST READ FOR ALL

By the way, just thought I'd report to you all, what John Stamets lectured at Greenfest.
He started out with information that could be read about in his
book: "Mycelium Running." However, there was more information that may be more recent that was of great interest.
1) There is a large fungus that grows high on Redwoods that he and his team discovered was capable of breaking down rare chemicals,specifically nerve gas (like VX, etc.). After more research he was approached by BioShield, a division of the Department of Defense about his work. It was blackboxed for a short time and then re-opened. Ever since, he has been working openly with the DoD on methods of implementing these mushrooms to counteract any kind of bioterrorist attack. My favorite quote of the lecture was when he said, "Saving the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest is now a matter of National Defense."
2) Another mushroom was found to exceptionally beat out enzymes and microbial methods of dealing with oil slicks (specifically the one in SF bay). In a current study, the human hair mats used to soak up oil were placed in four bins. One was a control, one was enzymes, one was microbes, and the last was mycelium. The mycelium far outperformed the other methods, with fully blonded matter and very large "happy" mushrooms now growing from the detritus.
3) Another type of mushroom has been found to absorb gamma radiation as a form of sustenance. Stamets mentioned this as a possible method of sustaining astronauts on long term journeys leaving the proximity of the sun's life-giving rays.
4) One type of mushroom, found growing around Chernobyl, feeds off radiation leftover from the Chernobyl incident. These mushroom grows "hot" and are highly inedible due to their radioactivity, but they leave the ground in their area completely harmless.

Cookie Monster wrote:These mushroom grows "hot" and are highly inedible due to their radioactivity, but they leave the ground in their area completely harmless.

Uh, what?

cilantro wrote:

Cookie Monster wrote:These mushroom grows "hot" and are highly inedible due to their radioactivity, but they leave the ground in their area completely harmless.

Uh, what?

I read that to mean that the shrooms absorb the radiation from the ground and become toxic, but that the ground itself is left safe as a result.

More here: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/duncan/17611/ which also links to the original article in Nature, but it's behind a paywall so I didn't link to it directly.

wak wrote:the ground itself is left safe as a result.

This is the part I have a problem with. What happens to the cesium-137, for example? Photosynthesis doesn't make your garden dark....

cilantro wrote:

wak wrote:the ground itself is left safe as a result.

This is the part I have a problem with. What happens to the cesium-137, for example? Photosynthesis doesn't make your garden dark....

Exactly! Plants convert sunlight to energy through photosynthesis. Mushrooms are funghi and do not contain chlorophyl (not green you know...) and do not gather energy from the sun. That's why mushroom can grow underground. They are more commonly known to break down dead organic matter. In this case, they absorb radiation to gather the engery. In the other examples cited by Cookie M, they absorb oil from oil slicks or chemicals from nerve gas.

In case people want to read more, here's a blog post from Technology Review (5/2007) with a link to the original research.

I don't understand all the science, but the comments on the blog post are similar to those here. I suppose in some sense the mushrooms themselves encapsulate the radioactive elements, so that they could at least be gathered more efficiently for removal to a more controlled environment?

OK, but what happens when the mushrooms die and melt back into the ground?