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Bring On the Bacteria!

Flynn Picardal explains why not all bacteria are bad.

Bacteria hold great promise for cleaning up contaminated soils and water sources, said Flynn Picardal, an associate professor in Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs. He has been working to isolate bacteria capable of breaking down polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a class of toxic organic chemicals found in some industrial wastes. Picardal now holds a patent on several strains of bacteria that can destroy hard-to-degrade PCBs in waste water, sludge, and sediment.

“Bacteria have been successfully used to clean up oil spills and degrade petroleum products, but it is harder to find bacteria that can manage man-made chemicals like PCBs because they haven’t had time to evolve alongside these new compounds. What we’ve been able to do in the lab is to isolate those few bacteria that can grow on different types of PCBs in the hope that they can be utilized as a tool for remediation,” he said. Bacteria may also be useful in controlling substances that cannot be broken down, Picardal said.

“In the case of contamination from metals and radionuclides, we are dealing with elemental substances that cannot be broken down any further. Although we can’t destroy these elements, we may be able to utilize bacteria that will immobilize them so they stay in the soil instead of migrating into groundwater.” Picardal said that one obstacle to the growth of bioremediation technologies is bacteria’s poor public image. “People typically think of bacteria in terms of disease, but only a small percentage of bacteria are harmful to human health. The vast majority perform vital environmental maintenance. Our existence really depends on bacteria, and our ability to clean up toxic environmental waste is going to depend on them too.”

Picardal can be reached at 812-855-0732 and picardal@indiana.edu.

You can read more about Flynn and his work at http://www.iu.edu/~speaweb/faculty/picardal.php.