Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Our ground water and agency infighting
The EPA fought the Pentagon over a toxic substance, trichloriethylene (TCE) and the EPA lost. The real losers are the people and other organisms that have to live with this water. More people stand to be affected by this than planes slamming into two towers. Think of it as a slow death due to cancer and birth defects.
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While TCE health risk assessment has been far less than stellar, there may be a glimmer of hope on the MTBE groundwater contamination issue.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060322141447.htm
MTBE Contamination: A Microbial Approach For Groundwater
Max Häggblom's Rutgers laboratory has taken an important step on the path to using microbes to rid the environment of methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE), a toxic gasoline additive now classified as a potential human carcinogen.
In a February 2006 paper in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, the researchers bring to light a tool that will help them find the key bacteria capable of breaking down MTBE. The additive has contaminated virtually all groundwater in the United States through fuel spills and leaking underground gasoline storage tanks.
"While gasoline hydrocarbons are much more toxic than MTBE, they are just candy to microbes and don't become as persistent a problem," said Häggblom, a professor in the department of biochemistry and microbiology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and the Biotechnology Center for Agriculture and the Environment on Rutgers' Cook College campus.
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