Mushrooms & Bioremediation.
Mushrooms have a variety of possible uses for bioremediation. Our research compilation found that mushrooms have been used for multiple different scientific experiments to remediate pollution.
Given that all of these bioremediation features of mushrooms have proven such success during multiple studies, it is of concern that this tool has not been implemented at an industrial level yet. During our research on the possible bioremediation that a new company could bring to the current global pollution situation, we have found that it is of extreme impact and importance to have the mushrooms be introduced as a mode of pollution removal and environmental remediation.
A feature of mushrooms that makes them attractive for commercial use, in spite of their possible shortcomings, is their potential for bioremediation. Bioremediation, according to Oxford Languages is “the use of either naturally occurring or deliberately introduced microorganisms or other forms of life to consume and break down environmental pollutants, in order to clean up a polluted site,” in this case the organisms introduced are mushrooms, which can deal with a plethora of different types of pollutions.
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In the study, Aerobic Carbamate Bioremediation Aided by Compost Residuals from the Mushroom Industry: Laboratory Studies, for example, pesticides are the pollutants of concern. The study introduces the issue of pesticides being found in different bodies of water, including those of drinking water. This study served as a proof-of-concept of the possibility of bioremediating water systems using “spent mushroom substrate (SMS)”. The conclusions of this study proved that “unacclimated SMS microorganisms were a good seeding source for remediating carbamate insecticide rinsates at concentrations of 10-30 mg/L.” Having these outcomes proves that even when using the mushroom industry’s leftover biomass (the SMS), great outcomes for bioremediation can be achieved.
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The previous study was published online in 2013, and more recent studies show that “currently, the management of dredged sediments mostly consists of landfilling or natural attenuation that, with time, leads to contaminant leakages and environmental risks.” (Becarelli et al., 2021). The reason might be due to the size of production of SMS not being optimal and the infrastructure implementation costs, both of which are briefly mentioned during this study (Bercarelli et al., 2021). However, the use of mushrooms can also help to prevent these contaminant leakages of petroleum chemicals, as shown by the results of the same study in which “ a positive correlation between microbial saprotrophic organisms, mobilizing the contamination, and commensal specialist species utilizing the contamination as carbon source” was seen (Bercarelli et al., 2021).
Mushrooms have also been found to be useful to remove other types of pollution, notably removing Ecoli from river water (Pini & Geddes, 2020), removing toxic metals from battery waste in water (Ayodele et al., 2020), as well as removing cadmium and endosulfan from soil (Wang et al., 2018).
Mushrooms & Metal Bioaccumulation.
Metal Bioaccumulation is also a feature of the mushroom, which has the potential to eradicate the use of mordants during the dyeing process. In our compilation of previous research, we found no previous use of the feature of metal bioaccumulation for the reduction or eradication of mordanting during the dyeing process with mushrooms.
According to Oxford Languages, mordants are "a substance, typically an inorganic oxide, that combines with a dye or stain and thereby fixes it in a material." Notably, mordants are metals that can contribute to the breaking down of fertile soil and being toxic for consumption by humans, animals, and plants when in large amounts. Knowing that it can be a downside for natural dyes to require such a complicated and harmful process of mordanting, the mushrooms would be a very powerful tool to fix this issue as well as bioremediate, as mentioned before.
There is no precedence for this use in the scientific community, but the presence of research on metal bioaccumulation in edible mushrooms (Ugulu et al., 2019) suggests that the metals do not just disappear after absorption. Therefore our research would focus on the use of this feature for furthering the natural dyeing processes, possibly combining at some point the use of mushroom dyes with other natural sources to have an extensive color palette without directly using mordants.