(Press-News.org) As farmers in Hungary ponder spring planting on hundreds of acres of farmland affected by last October's red mud disaster, scientists are reporting that high alkalinity is the main threat to a bountiful harvest, not toxic metals. In a study in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology, they also describe an inexpensive decontamination strategy using the mineral gypsum, an ingredient in plaster.
Erik Smolders and colleagues note that a dam burst at a factory processing aluminum ore, flooding the surrounding land with more than 700,000 cubic yards of a byproduct termed red mud. At least 10 people died and hundreds were injured in Hungary's worst-ever environmental disaster. Red mud contains toxic metals like arsenic, chromium, cadmium and nickel. The mud also contains radioactive elements and is highly alkaline, caustic enough to burn skin and eyes. On the scale for measuring acidity or alkalinity, 7 is neutral, anything above 7 is alkaline and below is acid. Red mud is about one million times more alkaline than a neutral material. With up to 4 inches of red mud coating farmland, concerns arose about red mud's potential impact on the 2011 planting of corn, alfalfa, and other crops. With little scientific knowledge about red mud's effects on plant growth, much of the concern focused on toxic metals.
The scientists' tests showed that plants in contaminated soil grew about 25 percent slower than crops grown in uncontaminated soil. The main culprit, however, appeared to be not toxic metals or radioactivity, but red mud's intense alkalinity and salt content. Adding gypsum to the red mud can reduce alkalinity and will accelerate the removal of the salts, the scientists add, recommending long-term monitoring of metals in the crops to remove any concerns with food chain contamination.
INFORMATION:
ARTICLE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
"The Red Mud Accident in Ajka (Hungary): Plant Toxicity and Trace Bioavailability in Red Mud Contaminated Soil"
DOWNLOAD FULL TEXT ARTICLE
http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/es104000m
CONTACT:
Erik Smolders, Ph.D.
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Division of Soil and Water Management
Catholic University of Leuven
Leuven, Belgium
Phone: 32 16 32 96 77
Fax: 32 16 32 19 97
Email: erik.smolders@ees.kuleuven.be
'Red mud' disaster's main threat to crops is not toxic metals
2011-02-03
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Shoo fly: Catnip oil repels bloodsucking flies
2011-02-03
Catnip, the plant that attracts domestic cats like an irresistible force, has proven 99 percent effective in repelling the blood-sucking flies that attack horses and cows, causing $2 billion in annual loses to the cattle industry. That's the word from a report published in ACS' biweekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Junwei Zhu and colleagues note that stable flies not only inflict painful bites, but also transmit multiple diseases. Cattle harried by these bloodsuckers may produce less meat and milk, have trouble reproducing, and develop diseases that can ...
Secrets of plant warfare underpin quest for safer, more secure global food supply
2011-02-03
Like espionage agents probing an enemy's fortifications, scientists are snooping out the innermost secrets of the amazing defense mechanisms that plants use to protect themselves from diseases. The effort — intended to discover ways of bolstering those natural defenses and enhance the safety and security of the global food supply — is the topic of an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine.
C&EN Associate Editor Sarah Everts notes that plants use a battery of cunning mechanisms to protect themselves from disease. ...
MicroRNA cocktail helps turn skin cells into stem cells
2011-02-03
LA JOLLA, Calif., February 1, 2011 – Stem cells are ideal tools to understand disease and develop new treatments; however, they can be difficult to obtain in necessary quantities. In particular, generating induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells can be an arduous task because reprogramming differentiated adult skin cells into iPS cells requires many steps and the efficiency is very low – researchers might end up with only a few iPS cells even if they started with a million skin cells. A team at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) set out to improve ...
Turtle populations affected by climate, habitat loss and overexploitation
2011-02-03
PORTLAND, Ore. February 1, 2011. Fact: The sex of some species of turtles is determined by the temperature of the nest: warm nests produce females, cooler nests, males. And although turtles have been on the planet for about 220 million years, scientists now report that almost half of the turtle species is threatened. Turtle scientists are working to understand how global warming may affect turtle reproduction. To bring attention to this and other issues affecting turtles, researchers and other supporters have designated 2011 as the Year of the Turtle.
Why should we ...
UA engineers study hybrid systems to design robust unmanned vehicles
2011-02-03
The UA College of Engineering's Hybrid Dynamics and Control Laboratory is developing mathematical analysis and design methods that could radically advance the capabilities of unmanned aircraft and ground vehicles, as well as many other systems that rely on autonomous decision making.
Researchers in the lab design computer control systems that may one day allow robotic surveillance aircraft to stay aloft indefinitely. These systems also might be used to safely guide aircraft and automobiles through small openings as they enter buildings. Or they could help airplanes and ...
Rain in Spain is on the decline
2011-02-03
A study led by the University of Zaragoza (UNIZAR) has studied precipitation trends in Spain's 10 hydrological basins over the 1946 to 2005 period. The results show that precipitation has declined overall between the months of March and June, reducing the length of the rainy season. The rains are heavier in October in the north west of the country.
Since 1946, the average precipitation falling on Spanish hydrological basins has undergone "notable" changes. The researchers observed a widespread decline in March and June, above all in March (except in the basin of the Segura), ...
Malaria medication may help against 1 type of frontotemporal dementia
2011-02-03
Frontotemporal dementia is caused by a breakdown of nerve cells in the frontal and temporal region of the brain (fronto-temporal lobe), which leads to, among other symptoms, a change in personality and behavior. The cause of some forms of frontotemporal dementia is a genetically determined reduction of a hormone-like growth factor, progranulin. Scientists around Dr. Anja Capell and Prof. Christian Haass have now shown that various drugs that are already on the market to treat malaria, angina pectoris or heart rhythm disturbances can increase the production of progranulin. ...
Nitrate improves mitochondrial function
2011-02-03
The spinach-eating cartoon character Popeye has much to teach us, new research from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet shows. The muscles' cellular power plants – the mitochondria – are boosted by nitrate, a substance found in abundance in vegetables such as lettuce, spinach and beetroot.
For half a century, inorganic nitrate has been associated with negative health effects, but more recently, evidence of the contrary has mounted. In the 1990s, a research group at Karolinska Institutet demonstrated how the body can convert nitrate to NO, a molecule ...
Singapore continues to lead Waseda rankings for third year running
2011-02-03
Amsterdam, The Netherlands / Tokyo, Japan, 2 February 2011 – The
Waseda University Institute of e-Government has released the 2011 Waseda
University World e-Government Ranking, marking its seventh consecutive
year of monitoring the development of e-Government worldwide. Singapore
is once again at the top of the list.
The complete list of the top 15 countries (economies) which have the most advanced
development in e-government according to the Waseda Survey are: (1) Singapore,
(2) USA, (3) Sweden, (4) Korea, (5) Finland, (6) Japan, (7) Canada, (8) Estonia, (9)
Belgium, ...
Biologists discover 'control center' for sperm production
2011-02-03
Biologists at the University of Leicester have published results of a new study into the intricacies of sex in flowering plants.
They have found that a gene in plants, called DUO1, acts as a master switch to ensure twin fertile sperm cells are made in each pollen grain.
The research identifies for the first time that DUO1 switches on a battery of genes that together govern sperm cell production and their ability to produce seeds..
The findings have implications for plant fertility, seed production – and could be used to help produce improved crops to help meet ...