Mycoremediation of Contaminated Soil

Fungi eat what almost nothing else will eat. Lignin, chitin, hydrocarbons, some plastics, certain pesticides — a wide portfolio of molecules that resist bacterial decomposition are, for the right fungus, lunch.

Mycoremediation is the practical use of this appetite. Diesel-contaminated soil inoculated with oyster mushrooms can lose the majority of its petroleum content in weeks. Certain white-rot fungi break down organochlorines that had been considered essentially permanent pollutants.

The technique is not a silver bullet. Field conditions differ wildly from lab conditions. Some contaminants are transformed into intermediates that must themselves be dealt with. And scaling mycoremediation to industrial sites requires infrastructure and patience that municipalities do not always have.

But it is quiet, biological, and often astonishingly effective. In a century that will need every remediation technology it can find, a solution that grows itself is worth taking seriously.