 |
||
|
Area Name |  |
 |
||
|
|
||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
EventsNCER News Item Friday,
May 23, 2002 NCER Staff Writer WASHINGTON (NCER) - Dr. Mitch Lasat, a scientist working in the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Research and Development, recently published a review of the state of the science on using plants to remediate sites contaminated with toxic metals. Dr. Lasat concludes that phytoremediation is an emerging technology and success will ultimately depend on an integrated research approach by plant biologists, soil microbiologists, agronomists, and environmental engineers. This multi-disciplinary effort would allow the formulation of a comprehensive research plan, ensure research continuity, and avoid redundance. The remediation of sites contaminated by toxic metals, such as arsenic, lead, and cadmium, is extremely challenging. Metals do not degrade and clean up usually requires their removal. This prohibitively expensive process also often degrades soil fertility with subsequent negative impacts on the ecosystem. A great deal of evidence indicates that plants have the potential to remove many toxic metals from soil. Despite this potential, the use of phytoremediation for environmental cleanup is limited by a lack of understanding of the mechanisms that allow plants to remove and accumulate these metals. Dr. Lasat's study provides a discussion of the environmental properties of toxic metals, a timely investigation considering EPA's recent interest in developing a comprehensive framework for assessing metals. Information provided in this review will be used to assess the hazards and risks of metals and metal compounds in the environment. The article, entitled "Phytoextraction of Toxic Metals: A Review of Biological Mechanisms," was published in the January/February 2002 edition of the Journal of Environmental Quality. Environmental scientists from 20 countries have already expressed interest in the manuscript. Dr. Lasat has an M.S. in Crop Science from West Virginia University and a Ph.D. in Plant Biochemistry from Cornell University. In 1999, he was awarded an Environmental Science and Technology Fellowship by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2001, he was awarded the EPA Bronze Medal for Commendable Service, in recognition of significantly advancing the state of knowledge in the area of phytoremediation. For the full text of Dr. Lasat's publication, go to http://www.epa.gov/ord/htm/lasatarticle.pdf. For more information, contact Estella Waldman at Waldman.Estella@epa.gov.
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
