As well as their primary roles in the creation and growth of plants, and thus life on earth, fungi have also been key in destroying plant material, acting as the decomposers of dead and dying organisms, transforming them to move nutrients back into the cycle of life. Without them the build-up of dead plant and animal matter would choke the earth.

You can see the evidence of this in my little patch of forest at the end of the road. As I look at the forest floor, I see that nowhere is it flat, it is entirely built on this process of decomposition. The ground is uneven and bumpy, and everywhere there are fallen trees and limbs littering the floor, decomposing and shrinking back down to become, over time, the soil that then is the base for new growth. Look closely and you see large trees growing out of the remains of long-fallen ancestors. Fungi plays a key role in this and on a broader scale throughout time have been responsible for literally shaping the surface of the planet.

MYCOREMEDIATION

Fungi break down organic material through enzymatic reactions – as mycelium speads it secretes enzymes that can transform even the toughest of materials. Not only that, they have proven their adaptability over hundreds of millions of years, responding to all kinds of different environments. They have survived previous mass extinctions to emerge as a force that remains to rejuvenate and transform changed environments over time.

Scientists have turned their attention to seeing how this process can be encouraged in other ways, perhaps in cleaning up the messes made by human industrial life. They call it mycoremediation which refers to using fungi to deliberately remove waste from the environment – capitalizing on their natural role as the earth’s original recyclers. The scientific imagination looks towards seeing how certain fungi decomposers will react when put in contact with some of the more intractable pollutants resulting from our industrial societies – oil spills, toxic mining byproducts, soil and water pollution and plastic waste. They ask if and how the fungi’s natural roles in breaking the hydrocarbon bonds in matter can be harnessed to deal with the real gnarly stuff.

Here are just some of the examples of experiments testing how fungi may be used in these ways:

• Removing contaminants from water sources – lab based studies have successfully shown the capacity of fungi mycelium to remove e. coli from polluted water from the Chicago River. Mycelium has been tested to restore habitat by filtering contaminated water run-off from farms, while releasing enzymes that degrade toxic contaminants. Experiments on toxic ash residue from California wildfires used hay bales full of oyster mushroom mycelium to clear heavy metals and other toxins from water sources in the damaged land before it could reach further downstream water collection.

• Other experiments have identified fungal species that may be able to decontaminate soil containing PAHs (Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons), a by-product of plastics production which is a carcinogenic that can harm human health. Researchers have also been experimenting with fungi that have shown the ability to degrade certain kinds of plastic products, leaving behind a bio-matter that can be more safely disposed of.

• Experiments have been done to see how fungi might be used in cleaning up things like oil spills and found them to be faster and more successful than more conventional clean-up methods. In an experiment on a pile of diesel contaminated debris the fungi succeeded in breaking down the hydrocarbons, absorbing it and rendering it harmless, sprouting mushrooms which produced spores, attracting insects, then the birds which came bringing seeds, and in a short period of time a healthy ecosystem began to develop on what had once been a toxic mess.

• Experiments in using fungi’s enzymes to break down industrial waste from bitumen (a semi-solid form of petroleum) mines, now stored in toxic tailing ponds, and have had encouraging results on a small scale. A biodegradable mat called MycoMat was inoculated with oyster mushroom mycelium and then rolled onto tailing ponds or surrounding soil. The mycelium release enzymes that tests showed can digest and eliminate the hydrocarbons in contaminated soil in only 21 days. The problem these tests are looking to solve is huge. Every barrel of bitumen extracted from the oil sands result in 1.5 barrels of tailings waste that requires indefinite containment from the risk of leaching into surrounding soils and contaminating ground water. Managing tailings waste is one of the most difficult environmental challenges facing the oil sands industry to put it mildly. The containment ponds are leaking.

So far, these are limited small scale experiments with intriguing results but this is where the human imagination can go nuts on future possibilities to help clean up the overwhelming pollution we have produced on this planet. I applaud all the brilliant minds turning their attention to novel solutions. That’s on a good day. On another day I despair that it’s all too late. Hmmm. Best to choose it to be a good day.

Nonetheless, as intriguing as these early days experiments are, we may still be pretty far away from anything close to being scalable in nature to deal with this mess. I too have an imagination when I think about unintended consequences – and humans have been notorious for mucking about using one species of something or other to solve a problem caused by another species that turns out to be the makings of an even bigger problem. Perhaps it’s wise to pay attention to the quirky little 1967 tune from Dr. West’s Medicine Show & Junk Band, The Eggplant That Ate Chicago paraphrased:

You’d better watch out for The Eggplant (Mushroom) that ate Chicago

For he may eat your city soon

You’d better watch out for The Eggplant (Mushroom) that ate Chicago

If he’s still hungry the whole country’s doomed

Then there’s the Big Daddy of human industrial waste production – nuclear. After 80 years, over 250,000 tons of nuclear waste sits stored at power plants around the world, piling up with no immediate global solutions in sight. (Exception – Finland is soon to complete the world’s first permanent disposal site for high-level nuclear waste, a project that will bury it 430 meters (1400 feet) into the Earth’s bedrock where it needs to remain undisturbed for 100,000 years.)

In Chernobyl, five years after the 1986 nuclear disaster, robots sent inside the toxic radioactive reactor showed that a jet-black fungus was growing on the inside walls, already doing its thing, attracted on its own to the radioactive material inside (yummy), using it as an energy source and growing.

Around the site, in the contaminated soil, significant amounts of radioactive particles have already been decomposed by soil fungi and over the years new trees and vegetation have grown and birds and wildlife have returned. But they’re not out of the woods (ha) yet, it’s a long term process. Measured radioactive levels have shown recent elevations due to soil disturbance by the Russian army’s invasion and capture of the area (they’ve left as of now).

The research and inventive applications of mycoremediation are really interesting, and could provide some good solutions to various problems. It’s in its infancy and so far, not yet scalable to make much of an immediate dent on some of the pressing environmental problems we face. Still, we absolutely need small scale, local imaginative solutions as well, and lot’s of them.

The fungi timeframe is not the human timeframe. We humans don’t have much time left to solve the problems we have created. Fungi have been around for a billion years and survived 5 previous extinctions on this earth, adapting and laying the groundwork (literally) for other life forms to emerge and populate a new earth. This gives a hint how the mess we’ve made will eventually get cleaned up, long after humans are gone. Fungi will “eat” it.

Next: Speaking of mind blowing – magic in the mushrooms