🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <6837@pdn.paradyne.com>, winters@gumby.paradyne.com (John Winters) writes:
> I have heard that a strain of psuedomonous bacteria have been developed
> that will eat up oil spills.  What if these were injected into an oil well?
> 
	They'd die.  They need quite a lot of nitrogen and phosphorus to
take advantage of their carbon source.
	Exxon showed up in Valdez that spraying fertilizer on the beach
was quickest way to clean it up.  You don't have to do any genetic
engineering. There are already bacteria there that would be more than
happy to eat the petroleum if you provided it with enough other
"vitamins. Of course the catch is that so much fertilizer on the beach
can have side effects, and apparently lack of an environmental impact
statement kept them from doing more than several hundred square YARDS of
beach as a demonstration project.  One more drawback.  This is such an
aerobic process, the bacteria's feast only lasts for about the first
inch or so down.
-- 
	        Craig Werner   (future MD/PhD, 4.5 years down, 2.5 to go)
	     werner@aecom.YU.EDU -- Albert Einstein College of Medicine
              (1935-14E Eastchester Rd., Bronx NY 10461, 212-931-2517)
                                "Meiguanxi ye meibanfa"