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It's pretty exciting when nature can solve environmental problems we've created better than we can solve them ourselves. Phytoremediation epitomizes that description: using plants to mitigate environmental contamination. (Mycoremediation is equally impressive, but there are no mushrooms to speak of in this story.)
CleanTechnica reported this week on some exciting news about grass and antibiotics: vetiver grass specifically, a grass native to India traditionally used for a variety of purposes from erosion control to perfumes to handicrafts. Now, in a search for a way to get antibiotics out of our water supply, researchers at Michigan Technological University are turning to vetiver grass for its ability to remove antibiotics from water and absorb it into the plant tissue.
It's not news that antibiotics are in our water—which is a problem for many reasons, not least of which is the development of drug-resistant bacteria. Because conventional wastewater treatment facilities were not designed to address antibiotics, even treated wastewater contains traces of the drugs.
To study how vetiver grass might fare at this, the Michigan researchers grew vetiver grass in water laden with two antibiotics common in the dairy industry (a large source of the contamination) for 12 weeks. They found that 95.5 percent of the drugs were removed from the water and taken into the plant tissue.
No plan yet for what to do with the now plant-inhabiting antibiotics, but it's a start. Check out the CleanTechnica story or the study to learn more, read about other phytoremediation plants at Planet Green, or about "phytocapping" in landfills on TreeHugger.
