[Southern California Permaculture] Mycobooms for Oil Spills/On Mycoremediation: An Interview With Paul Stamets

Thu May 21 22:37:27 PDT 2015

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

    * <https://mycotek.org/index.php?members/fungicide.790/>
    Fungicide

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 
<http://www.fungi.com/>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:

<http://fungi.com/blog/items/the-petroleum-problem.html>The 
Petroleum Problem and 
<http://coalitionforpositivechange.com/stamets-fallout-mycoremediation.pdf>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: 
<http://www.motherearthnews.com/shopping/detail.aspx?itemnumber=6587>Earth 
Repair.

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margie at sbpermaculture.org
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Santa Babara Permaculture Network Logo

(805) 962-2571
P.O. Box 92156, Santa Barbara, CA 93190
margie at sbpermaculture.org
http://www.sbpermaculture.org

P Please consider the environment before printing this email

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