6 ms·

In Cleveland, mushrooms digest entire houses

116 points by geox 3y ago

black_13 3y ago
[dead]
ildon 3y ago
This is the missing prequel to "The last of us"
Pine_Mushroom 3y ago
For a contrarian take on mycoremediation here is a quote from noted mycologist Alan Rockefeller: "Mycoremediation barely works, most times I think it is better to save the time and energy and let nature do the remediation. Particularly with regards to mycofiltration, eating oil and heavy metal removal. If you do nothing at all, natural bacteria and fungi in the environment will do the remediation - so maybe just mix in some substrate, turn the soil and let nature do the rest. Regarding mycofiltration, doesn't really work and even if it did, wouldn't take long for the mycelium to go anarobic and die. One idea I heard is to just dump a truck load of wood chips in the stream, and let nature do the rest. At least that way you are not wasting energy making spawn. No idea if this works at all. You can eat oil with oyster mushrooms, but it has to be at really low concentrations, and you probably burn more oil than you eat making the spawn. Natural bacterias eat oil too and they are everywhere. Regarding Paul, he is a great salesman and ambassador, and he has gotten a lot of people into mushrooms. For that he deserves to be held in high regard. He is pretty cool in person. I do think he probably oversells his products, and that medicinal mushrooms shouldn't be sold as medicine until they are proven to work. Turkey tails have been proven to work (but not very much), and the rest of them are pretty much untested in large clinical trials. Mushrooms do make excellent placebos. If you ask professional mycologists about Stamets or mycoremediation or medicinal mushrooms, they typically change the subject pretty quick, if they are feeling polite. There are a ton of people doing mycoremediation trials, but almost no one scaling it up to solve real world problems. Every idealistic first year college mycology student wants to save the world with mushrooms, but by the time they get a PhD they are thinking very differently. Tradd Cotter and Peter Mccoy are doing a lot of work with mycoremediation, but I notice that they are mostly making their money writing books and giving workshops/lectures rather than actually doing it. But they probably answer their emails and would be excellent people to talk to about details and new ideas."
- thfuran 3y ago
  >heavy metal removal. If you do nothing at all, natural bacteria and fungi in the environment will do the remediation - so maybe just mix in some substrate, turn the soil and let nature do the rest. And where exactly will the bacteria send the heavy metal?
  - Pine_Mushroom 3y ago
    This is beyond my expertise, but here is a quote from a paper on the subject: "Bacteria have several methods of processing heavy metals through general resistance mechanisms, biosorption, adsorption, and efflux mechanisms. Bacillus spp. are model Gram-positive bacteria that have been studied extensively for their biosorption abilities and molecular mechanisms that enable their survival as well as their ability to remove and detoxify heavy metals. This review aims to highlight the molecular methods of Bacillus spp. in removing various heavy metals ions from contaminated environments." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8402239/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8402239/
- offtrail 3y ago
  I disagree with basically all of that. He say mycoremediation barely works and then literally describes mycoremediation. "so maybe just mix in some substrate, turn the soil and let nature do the rest" >Regarding mycofiltration, doesn't really work and even if it did, wouldn't take long for the mycelium to go anarobic and die. Then a sentence later. >I have no idea if this works. You know why that is? Because he hasn't done it. >medicinal mushrooms shouldn't be sold as medicine until they are proven to work They do work. Very well. 1000s of years of human history and 1000s of clinical trials have proven it. I had never heard of Alen Rockefeller before now, but with that one statement makes me think he's either retarded or disingenuous in his opinion.
  - Pine_Mushroom 3y ago
    Alan is quite well known and respected in the field. Fair enough pointing out he has no experience with mycoremediation, but I still find his opinion worth considering.
tlhighbaugh 3y ago
Years ago, in a pool of improperly disposed of motor oil in the corner of my ex-girlfriend's parent's yard, I was amazed to discover mushrooms that started growing in the oil and looked like they were consuming the oil. Each winter, when mushroom conditions were ripest, they returned until the stump the pool of oil gathered around sprouted new branches and started growing again. Turns out there are species of mushrooms that consume oil on the surface of the planet. So this doesn't shock me at all, its an example of how regardless of humanity's arrogance, life on Earth will be around long after our species and its descendants cease to exist, to think otherwise is to prove one's ignorance.
- x86x87 3y ago
  Yeah. Lookup Mycellium Running by that wacky dude Stamets. There are mushroom species that can be emplotey to cleanup nasty oil spills and stuff. Also, there are mushroom species that can breakdown plastics in effect getting rid of stuff that woulf take hundreds/thousads of years to decompose. Mushrooms are amazing
  - x86x87 3y ago
    Here: https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_6_ways_mushrooms_can_...
  - ProllyInfamous 3y ago
    >Mushrooms are amazing Lichens are incredible. Check out the book Entangled Life, which Paul Stamets proclaims is "a must-read!"
    - x86x87 3y ago
      Lichens are a mix of algae & fungi. :)
      - ProllyInfamous 3y ago
        & bacteria. :)
justrealist 3y ago
I like the idea in principle but I would love a more clear analysis of where the lead paint from old dismantled houses ends up. I wouldn't want to use mycelium bricks in my house, if I thought they were going to leach toxins into everything they touch...
- bongodongobob 3y ago
  Please explain how something as inert as lead "leaches".
  - justrealist 3y ago
    It literally contaminates into the soil. This happens with all sorts of lead pipes, cables, etc. This is not me making things up, it's a huge concern when urban gardening.
    - Anotheroneagain 3y ago
      If somebody tells you that the vegetables from their garden taste 100 times better than those from the store, this is why.
  - klyrs 3y ago
    Unless the lead is transmuted into something benign (spoiler: nope), one must account for where it's going.
  - lightedman 3y ago
    Simple warm pH-imbalanced water is all you need. I can make cerrusite artificially with older lead-plumbed copper pipe and a moderate temperature (50C) pH-imbalanced hard water source, run that whole discharge through a water carbonation system and let the results evaporate under pressure. Bam. In a day I've leached lead out and crystallized it into another form that you would find in volcanic fields. Note: The leaching takes almost no time, the evaporation is the majority of time needed for forming the cerrusite. Lead is nowhere near as inert as you imagine it to be. It oxidizes readily.
echelon 3y ago
I'm worried of breathing in fungi. They're already known carcinogens. If these shed spores, they could establish a latent infection. This is what fungi do. We're already all encountering this on a day to day basis at a background level. No reason to increase exposure.
- offtrail 3y ago
  >I'm worried of breathing in fungi I have some bad news for you. You do with every breath. >They're known carcinogens Depends on the mushroom. Many are actually anti cancer, but I'm going to to assume you meant breathing the spores. It's only a concern if you're in an enclosed space. Like a fruiting room full of oyster mushrooms. >they could establish a latent infection. This is what fungi do. Having a fungal infection isn't necessarily bad thing. YOU have a fungal community in and on you right now. They're protecting you even as you read this. It's been shown that inculating trees with chaga mushrooms can prevent infections from other more aggressive parasites and blights. Fungi are your friends. Oyster mushrooms aren't going to infect you. If anyone would, I'd put my money on cordyceps. And those aren't used for mycorestoration. >We're already all encountering this on a day to day basis at a background level. No reason to increase exposure. Gonna have to disagree. Humans are responsible for completely fucking the mycelial mass of earth. We knocked a big cog out of the carbon cycle through mass development of the land, mass use of pesticides, fungicides, and fertilizers. Pavement everywhere. And we absolutely need to fix it. Good news for you though, people are working on sporeless strains of fungi used in mycorestoration. Soon your worries will be irrelevant.
- mikeweiss 3y ago
  Curious... do you eat mushrooms?
- Uptrenda 3y ago
  I think I heard somewhere that if not for a few degrees in temperature human beings would be plagued by many fungal diseases. But because of our body temperature (and immune system) they find it very hard to live in our bodies. I'm wondering if global warming will accelerate the adaption of fungi to higher temperatures and therefore potentially allowing a new species to invade us. The future is fun and holds many things to look forward to. Perhaps we can become one with the mushrooms some day.
CarRamrod 3y ago
If you go inside, you get to choose from one of three treasure chests.
mikewarot 3y ago
In nearby East Chicago, Indiana, the lead level in some tested soils reached 9.1% (91,000 ppm) [1] If this could be used to capture that lead, and separate it out, you could mine the soil, while you treat a superfund site at the same time. [1] https://www.nrdc.org/stories/east-chicago-knowing-your-soil-toxic-only-half-battle https://www.nrdc.org/stories/east-chicago-knowing-your-soil-...
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666016423002451 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266601642... https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/10/10/3528 https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/10/10/3528
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
rekabis 3y ago
Maybe with a little research and genetic manipulation we can engineer the world of Nausicaä, where an entire ecosystem of fungi purge the world of toxins from man’s prior technological civilizations.
- hypercube33 3y ago
  I was thinking more of the world of Command and Conquer where we engineer Tiberium to do mining for us
nitwit005 3y ago
Presumably, if the fungus takes in toxic metals, someone has to go through the wood and collect the body of the fungus, and do some significant chemistry later to extract it out?
- Sharlin 3y ago
  Apparently they’re able to concentrate absorbed contaminants in their fruiting bodies. Very convenient. At least as long as we’re talking about species that are nonedible in the first place.
  - Anotheroneagain 3y ago
    I suppose it's to motivate animals to eat them. Even people prefer food high in heavy metals by taste.
    - Sharlin 3y ago
      I think it’s more that the mushroom parts are expendable, they die anyway after they’ve done their job. I don’t think fungi in general benefit much from animals eating them, not the way many plants do.
      - Anotheroneagain 3y ago
        They want animals to ingest their spores.
        bdd8f1df777b 3y ago
        It's my understanding that spore generating vegetables just spread their spores around by wind or other natural means. Unlike angiosperms that often spread their seeds with the help of animals.
  - nitwit005 3y ago
    That still means a fairly low concentration overall. It's not as if it's going to make a solid lead mushroom.
t1c 3y ago
.......only in Ohio
ginko 3y ago
> Effectively what we're doing is diverting tonnage from landfill Wouldn’t digesting the house release more co2 to the atmosphere than just burying it in an anaerobic landfill?
- offtrail 3y ago
  About half the mycelial mass will be released as co2.* With oysters anyway. The rest will ideally become healthy top soil for plants that off set the co2. They also remediate toxic chemicals within the house. In the landfill, all that matter is locked away from the flow of matter and energy that make for a healthy world. We should really only be using anaerobic landfills for plastics and things that need a lack of oxygen to be broken down. Even then, large scale bioreactors might be more effective and take up less land. I bet old mines would work great for that.
lossolo 3y ago
There are mushrooms that "eat" radiation from nuclear waste. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus

116 points by geox 3y ago

black_13 3y ago

[dead]

ildon 3y ago

This is the missing prequel to "The last of us"

Pine_Mushroom 3y ago

For a contrarian take on mycoremediation here is a quote from noted mycologist Alan Rockefeller: "Mycoremediation barely works, most times I think it is better to save the time and energy and let nature do the remediation. Particularly with regards to mycofiltration, eating oil and heavy metal removal. If you do nothing at all, natural bacteria and fungi in the environment will do the remediation - so maybe just mix in some substrate, turn the soil and let nature do the rest. Regarding mycofiltration, doesn't really work and even if it did, wouldn't take long for the mycelium to go anarobic and die. One idea I heard is to just dump a truck load of wood chips in the stream, and let nature do the rest. At least that way you are not wasting energy making spawn. No idea if this works at all. You can eat oil with oyster mushrooms, but it has to be at really low concentrations, and you probably burn more oil than you eat making the spawn. Natural bacterias eat oil too and they are everywhere. Regarding Paul, he is a great salesman and ambassador, and he has gotten a lot of people into mushrooms. For that he deserves to be held in high regard. He is pretty cool in person. I do think he probably oversells his products, and that medicinal mushrooms shouldn't be sold as medicine until they are proven to work. Turkey tails have been proven to work (but not very much), and the rest of them are pretty much untested in large clinical trials. Mushrooms do make excellent placebos. If you ask professional mycologists about Stamets or mycoremediation or medicinal mushrooms, they typically change the subject pretty quick, if they are feeling polite. There are a ton of people doing mycoremediation trials, but almost no one scaling it up to solve real world problems. Every idealistic first year college mycology student wants to save the world with mushrooms, but by the time they get a PhD they are thinking very differently. Tradd Cotter and Peter Mccoy are doing a lot of work with mycoremediation, but I notice that they are mostly making their money writing books and giving workshops/lectures rather than actually doing it. But they probably answer their emails and would be excellent people to talk to about details and new ideas."

thfuran 3y ago
>heavy metal removal. If you do nothing at all, natural bacteria and fungi in the environment will do the remediation - so maybe just mix in some substrate, turn the soil and let nature do the rest. And where exactly will the bacteria send the heavy metal?
- Pine_Mushroom 3y ago
  This is beyond my expertise, but here is a quote from a paper on the subject: "Bacteria have several methods of processing heavy metals through general resistance mechanisms, biosorption, adsorption, and efflux mechanisms. Bacillus spp. are model Gram-positive bacteria that have been studied extensively for their biosorption abilities and molecular mechanisms that enable their survival as well as their ability to remove and detoxify heavy metals. This review aims to highlight the molecular methods of Bacillus spp. in removing various heavy metals ions from contaminated environments." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8402239/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8402239/
offtrail 3y ago
I disagree with basically all of that. He say mycoremediation barely works and then literally describes mycoremediation. "so maybe just mix in some substrate, turn the soil and let nature do the rest" >Regarding mycofiltration, doesn't really work and even if it did, wouldn't take long for the mycelium to go anarobic and die. Then a sentence later. >I have no idea if this works. You know why that is? Because he hasn't done it. >medicinal mushrooms shouldn't be sold as medicine until they are proven to work They do work. Very well. 1000s of years of human history and 1000s of clinical trials have proven it. I had never heard of Alen Rockefeller before now, but with that one statement makes me think he's either retarded or disingenuous in his opinion.
- Pine_Mushroom 3y ago
  Alan is quite well known and respected in the field. Fair enough pointing out he has no experience with mycoremediation, but I still find his opinion worth considering.

tlhighbaugh 3y ago

Years ago, in a pool of improperly disposed of motor oil in the corner of my ex-girlfriend's parent's yard, I was amazed to discover mushrooms that started growing in the oil and looked like they were consuming the oil. Each winter, when mushroom conditions were ripest, they returned until the stump the pool of oil gathered around sprouted new branches and started growing again. Turns out there are species of mushrooms that consume oil on the surface of the planet. So this doesn't shock me at all, its an example of how regardless of humanity's arrogance, life on Earth will be around long after our species and its descendants cease to exist, to think otherwise is to prove one's ignorance.

x86x87 3y ago
Yeah. Lookup Mycellium Running by that wacky dude Stamets. There are mushroom species that can be emplotey to cleanup nasty oil spills and stuff. Also, there are mushroom species that can breakdown plastics in effect getting rid of stuff that woulf take hundreds/thousads of years to decompose. Mushrooms are amazing
- x86x87 3y ago
  Here: https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_6_ways_mushrooms_can_...
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago
  >Mushrooms are amazing Lichens are incredible. Check out the book Entangled Life, which Paul Stamets proclaims is "a must-read!"
  - x86x87 3y ago
    Lichens are a mix of algae & fungi. :)
    - ProllyInfamous 3y ago
      & bacteria. :)

justrealist 3y ago

I like the idea in principle but I would love a more clear analysis of where the lead paint from old dismantled houses ends up. I wouldn't want to use mycelium bricks in my house, if I thought they were going to leach toxins into everything they touch...

bongodongobob 3y ago
Please explain how something as inert as lead "leaches".
- justrealist 3y ago
  It literally contaminates into the soil. This happens with all sorts of lead pipes, cables, etc. This is not me making things up, it's a huge concern when urban gardening.
  - Anotheroneagain 3y ago
    If somebody tells you that the vegetables from their garden taste 100 times better than those from the store, this is why.
- klyrs 3y ago
  Unless the lead is transmuted into something benign (spoiler: nope), one must account for where it's going.
- lightedman 3y ago
  Simple warm pH-imbalanced water is all you need. I can make cerrusite artificially with older lead-plumbed copper pipe and a moderate temperature (50C) pH-imbalanced hard water source, run that whole discharge through a water carbonation system and let the results evaporate under pressure. Bam. In a day I've leached lead out and crystallized it into another form that you would find in volcanic fields. Note: The leaching takes almost no time, the evaporation is the majority of time needed for forming the cerrusite. Lead is nowhere near as inert as you imagine it to be. It oxidizes readily.

echelon 3y ago

I'm worried of breathing in fungi. They're already known carcinogens. If these shed spores, they could establish a latent infection. This is what fungi do. We're already all encountering this on a day to day basis at a background level. No reason to increase exposure.

offtrail 3y ago
>I'm worried of breathing in fungi I have some bad news for you. You do with every breath. >They're known carcinogens Depends on the mushroom. Many are actually anti cancer, but I'm going to to assume you meant breathing the spores. It's only a concern if you're in an enclosed space. Like a fruiting room full of oyster mushrooms. >they could establish a latent infection. This is what fungi do. Having a fungal infection isn't necessarily bad thing. YOU have a fungal community in and on you right now. They're protecting you even as you read this. It's been shown that inculating trees with chaga mushrooms can prevent infections from other more aggressive parasites and blights. Fungi are your friends. Oyster mushrooms aren't going to infect you. If anyone would, I'd put my money on cordyceps. And those aren't used for mycorestoration. >We're already all encountering this on a day to day basis at a background level. No reason to increase exposure. Gonna have to disagree. Humans are responsible for completely fucking the mycelial mass of earth. We knocked a big cog out of the carbon cycle through mass development of the land, mass use of pesticides, fungicides, and fertilizers. Pavement everywhere. And we absolutely need to fix it. Good news for you though, people are working on sporeless strains of fungi used in mycorestoration. Soon your worries will be irrelevant.
mikeweiss 3y ago
Curious... do you eat mushrooms?
Uptrenda 3y ago
I think I heard somewhere that if not for a few degrees in temperature human beings would be plagued by many fungal diseases. But because of our body temperature (and immune system) they find it very hard to live in our bodies. I'm wondering if global warming will accelerate the adaption of fungi to higher temperatures and therefore potentially allowing a new species to invade us. The future is fun and holds many things to look forward to. Perhaps we can become one with the mushrooms some day.

CarRamrod 3y ago

If you go inside, you get to choose from one of three treasure chests.

mikewarot 3y ago

In nearby East Chicago, Indiana, the lead level in some tested soils reached 9.1% (91,000 ppm) [1] If this could be used to capture that lead, and separate it out, you could mine the soil, while you treat a superfund site at the same time. [1] https://www.nrdc.org/stories/east-chicago-knowing-your-soil-toxic-only-half-battle https://www.nrdc.org/stories/east-chicago-knowing-your-soil-...

toomuchtodo 3y ago
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666016423002451 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266601642... https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/10/10/3528 https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/10/10/3528

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

rekabis 3y ago

Maybe with a little research and genetic manipulation we can engineer the world of Nausicaä, where an entire ecosystem of fungi purge the world of toxins from man’s prior technological civilizations.

hypercube33 3y ago
I was thinking more of the world of Command and Conquer where we engineer Tiberium to do mining for us

nitwit005 3y ago

Presumably, if the fungus takes in toxic metals, someone has to go through the wood and collect the body of the fungus, and do some significant chemistry later to extract it out?

Sharlin 3y ago
Apparently they’re able to concentrate absorbed contaminants in their fruiting bodies. Very convenient. At least as long as we’re talking about species that are nonedible in the first place.
- Anotheroneagain 3y ago
  I suppose it's to motivate animals to eat them. Even people prefer food high in heavy metals by taste.
  - Sharlin 3y ago
    I think it’s more that the mushroom parts are expendable, they die anyway after they’ve done their job. I don’t think fungi in general benefit much from animals eating them, not the way many plants do.
    - Anotheroneagain 3y ago
      They want animals to ingest their spores.
      - bdd8f1df777b 3y ago
        It's my understanding that spore generating vegetables just spread their spores around by wind or other natural means. Unlike angiosperms that often spread their seeds with the help of animals.
- nitwit005 3y ago
  That still means a fairly low concentration overall. It's not as if it's going to make a solid lead mushroom.

t1c 3y ago

.......only in Ohio

ginko 3y ago

> Effectively what we're doing is diverting tonnage from landfill Wouldn’t digesting the house release more co2 to the atmosphere than just burying it in an anaerobic landfill?

offtrail 3y ago
About half the mycelial mass will be released as co2.* With oysters anyway. The rest will ideally become healthy top soil for plants that off set the co2. They also remediate toxic chemicals within the house. In the landfill, all that matter is locked away from the flow of matter and energy that make for a healthy world. We should really only be using anaerobic landfills for plastics and things that need a lack of oxygen to be broken down. Even then, large scale bioreactors might be more effective and take up less land. I bet old mines would work great for that.

lossolo 3y ago

There are mushrooms that "eat" radiation from nuclear waste. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus