a good interview (and book) to
read in light of recent events with the recent SB oil spill... it's
apparent at the rate we are going, we will need every
bioremediation strategy Paul
Stamets can think up...
On Mycoremediation: An Interview With Paul
Stamets
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- Paul Stamets, a mycoremediation expert, explains some of the ways
mushrooms can lead to a healthier Earthall by using natural means.
- By Leila Darwish
- October 2014
- There are many naturally-occurring plants and species that have the
ability to heal the earth. In Earth Repair (New Society
Publishers, 2013), author Leila Darwish dives into bioremediation
techniques that work with many of the world’s oldest disaster responders,
alchemists and healers. The following excerpt is from Chapter 6,
“Mycoremediation.”
- Paul Stamets, D.Sc. is the leading mycorestoration visionary and
author of several guidebooks on everything from how to cultivate gourmet
and medicinal mushrooms to mycoremediation. With his many mycorestoration
projects, resources, experiments and seminars, Stamets is constantly
pushing the edge of what is possible when it comes to the healing forces
of fungi.
- Leila Darwish: What are some of the things you are working on at the
moment with mycofiltration or mycoremediation?
-
- Paul Stamets: We have several projects in Mason County, Washington,
USA using burlap sacks for filtering greywater. We try to find choke
points where there is confluence, where we can have the maximum effect by
putting mycelium at these points. Then we are able to capture
contaminants and ameliorate the impact downstream of those choke
points.
- The water tends to carry more than just one contaminant, so it
is not uncommon for the water to have E. coli, pesticides, nitrates and
phosphorous (for example). This is where mycoremediation and
mycofiltration offer some unique advantages. Oyster mushrooms will not
only break down petroleum-based contaminants; they will also capture and
eat E. coli, a fecal coliform bacterium, so you get a two-for-one with
that species.
- The more sophisticated approach would be addressing the different
types of contaminants species-specifically which means we would put a
serial number of species together. You can imagine one row of burlap
sacks filled with oyster mushrooms, at the front, to capture petroleum
products as well as E. coli. If there was a mercury output from an upland
source, then turkey tails have been well demonstrated to bind up mercury
and mercuric ions in water with the selenium that the mycelium traps. The
selenium and mercury come together form a biomolecular bond or unit that
is totally non-toxic.
- That is one simple example where you could use oyster mushroom and
turkey tails serially and then you are also using and amplifying
indigenous species. These two mushrooms are prime candidates as they
literally occur in every woodland in the world. They are circumpolar
from the tropics to the boreal forest up north.
- Mycoremediation in the Community
- Leila Darwish: How can we get more mycoremediation work happening at
the community level?
- Paul Stamets: Every community should have a gourmet mushroom farm
to help build carbon in the soil, to provide local healthy food and to be
able to recycle very proximate sources of debris and waste. Every gourmet
mushroom farm (they should all be certified organic) should be reinvented
as an environmental healing center so that the mycelium can be used for
remediation locally. Moist mycelium weighs a lot; so shipping tons of
mycelium across country does not make any sense for remediation. With the
debris fields that are close to the problems, you want to keep that
distance as short as possible and site the farms in close proximity. My
dream is that there would thousands upon thousands of small mushroom
farms spread across the world that would be tied in to healing art
centers, schools, to teaching environmental sciences, to teaching basic
biology and the role of fungi in nature.
- Using Mycobooms to Clean Up Oil Spills
- Leila Darwish: What are some ways that fungi can be used to help
clean up oil spills in water?
-
- Paul Stamets: I recently invented Mycobooms, which are
floating booms of straw filled with oyster mushroom mycelium. They
can be used to corral and hold in oil and in the process of digesting the
straw, the mycelium produces enzymes that break down the oil. These
Mycobooms are totally biodegradable, using hemp socks that are about 20
feet in length 12 inches in diameter. They can float for three to four
months. The booms begin the enzymatic breakdown of the oil, especially
the more complex heavy hydrocarbon rings; these are called polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The mycelia break them down in a stepwise
fashion into smaller and smaller aromatic rings that make the PAHs then
available for bacteria and other organisms to do their job too. So these
fungi are the gateway species. There is a big takehome message here:
These primary saprophytic mushrooms begin the sequence of decomposition
that allows for a bloom and burst of biodiversity to occur so that other
members in the ecological community can then use their skill sets to
further break down the toxic waste. So these Mycobooms could be a gateway
invention, and once you get them involved, habitat restoration occurs
much more quickly.
- Leila Darwish: What are some methods for mycoremediating oil
spills on land?
- Paul Stamets: A method for land oil spills resembles sheet mulches.
Layers of straw and wood chips inoculated with mycelia, 4–12 inches deep.
Another extremely interesting and promising thing is that after a
mushroom farm produces all the mushrooms, the substrate may be more
valuable than the mushrooms themselves in terms of the economic value of
its inherent enzymes. You can squeeze the enzymes out from the substrate,
and you end up with this yellowish fluid that is extremely active at
breaking down toxic waste. Like milking a cow, you could in a sense milk
a mushroom farm, collecting the extracts coming from the substrate after
it stopped producing mushrooms. Within that juice is an extremely
powerful number of enzymes that can be very helpful in
mycoremediation.
- Leila Darwish: Any final mycorevolutionary thoughts?
- Paul Stamets: We need a tidal change in consciousness, and fungi
offer so many solutions that we can put into practice. But it is going to
take a mycological revolution on an order of magnitude such that kids
learn about fungi in elementary school and in middle school. So that
students and the next generations grow up to be mycologically astute,
understanding that we can repair the damage we inflict upon nature. If we
don’t, we are shooting holes in our lifeboat; we will not only be the
cause of major extinction, but we will become its victim.
- For more information about Paul Stamets, D.Sc., and his work, please
visit his website Fungi.com. His
organization, Fungi Perfecti, offers mushroom cultivation and remediation
seminars, resources, and you can order mushroom cultivating kits, spawn
and books online. Stamet’s most recent book, Mycelium Running: How
Mushrooms Can Help Save the World, is a foundational resource to read for
anyone wanting to get involved in mycorestoration.
- His other two books, Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms and The
Mushroom Cultivator, are also great guides to help you cultivate and
understand the many different types of edible and medicinal mushrooms.
- For more information on Paul Stamet’s take on the mycoremediation of
oil spills and of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, please read:
- The
Petroleum Problem and
The Nuclear Forest Recovery Zone: Mycoremediation of the Japanese
Landscape After Radioactive Fallout.
- This excerpt has been reprinted with permission from Earth Repair: A
Grassroots Guide to Healing Toxic and Damaged Landscapes,by Leila
Darwish, published by New Society Publishers, 2013. Buy this book from
our store:
Earth Repair.
-
- (805) 962-2571
- P.O. Box 92156, Santa Barbara, CA 93190
- margie@sbpermaculture.org
-
http://www.sbpermaculture.org
- P
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