How does this work on a practical level? Do you scrape the soil to a depth of a foot and submit it to electrolysis or is the soil washed and the sludge then processed? How many grams of halogens does this recover per square acre of contaminated site? Does this sterilise the site?
The real practical and immediate help would be ground water contamination. How many bad chemicals now permeate the water supplies around farming communities. Can this be used to treat the drinking water supply?
Today we scrape however many meters deep of soil and haul off to a landfill. I assume you'd scrape it up, run it through something to pull out everything bigger than a pebble. Wash the pebbles, the rinse water goes with the soil through the cleaning process.
Certainly what comes out of the machine will not be living.
a process that can be used *on site* to render environmental toxins such as DDT and lindane harmless and convert them into valuable chemicals – a breakthrough for the *remediation of contaminated sites*
This looks very promising! Efficiently dehalogenizing toxins, preserving their carbon "skeletons" to be repurposed for valuable (nontoxic) industrial chemicals, creating NaCl (table salt) as a byproduct... seems full of win to me. Here's hoping...
Dr John Todd has figured out and demonstrated a method to remediate DDT-contaminated water without the use of electrolysis, or other energy inputs. He was able to decontaminate one of the top superfund sites. The method is broadly versatile, and requires even lower tech than electrolysis. His methods can also sequester heavy metals. It involves introducing organisms across all of the kingdoms so that they self-organize on the contaminant.
More narrowly, Paul Stamets has worked a lot on mycroremediation — remediating with fungi.
>Dr John Todd has figured out and demonstrated a method to remediate DDT-contaminated water ... It involves introducing organisms across all of the kingdoms so that they self-organize on the contaminant.
Biomimicry, not invention. He reasoned that the DNA is a vast library for transforming molecules from one to another, and therefore, ecosystems are capable of breaking down pollutants.
In practice, there are multiple vats. The first stage has algae growing, which sequesters the heavy metals. The next stages follow other kinds of ecosystems, such as organisms from swamps. He will mix samples from multiple ecosystems that normally don’t mix so that some kind of novel, self-organizing ecosystem can form around the pollutant.
Then it is measuring and monitoring the contaminants. With the superfund site, he was tracking presence of the top ten pollutants on the EPA list. However, he also shows how people can use much simpler, non-industrial tests — using samples from say, uncontaminated lake water nearby and use a microscope to see if the water being treated will kill those microorganisms. This allows for remediation to be executed by people who don’t have access to labs, but still need a way to test their water.
A much simpler version of this that follows the same design principles is capable of local, onsite treatment of ordinary black water.
Likely not what you’re describing, but this hypothetical is what came to mind.
Consider if organism A consumes organism B in a symbiotic way. E.g., organism B makes berries.
Then, we engineer A to seek out and consume DDT, perhaps by making DDT delicious or fragrant to A.
Unexpected consequence: organism B evolves to produce berries that are absolutely redolent with DDT.
This might happen centuries later, due to the DDT-phillic genes outlasting the presence of artificial DDT in the environment, or it could happen much sooner, or it might never happen. Hard to know. “Life finds a way.”
This article doesn't link to the primary research. It's referencing a Spark Award granted this year for work from 2024 and 2021. Here are the relevant articles:
Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) are highly recalcitrant and toxic compounds that pose a profound threat to ecosystems across the world. One of the most notorious representatives of this class of chemicals is hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) – a known human carcinogen – a specific isomer of which was used as the insecticide Lindane.
...
In 2021, the groups of Morandi and Waldvogel disclosed a vicinal dihalide shuttle reaction under electrochemical conditions, with which HCH could be fully dechlorinated. In the present work, instead of transferring chlorine to another molecule, we sought to sequester it as an innocuous inorganic chloride salt, which is preferable for large-scale application.
Here's the free-to-read Accepted Manuscript version of the earlier 2021 publication:
"Merging shuttle reactions and paired electrolysis for reversible vicinal
dihalogenations"
short, sweet, got the zam.
for toxic waste sites (superfund), and
land fills this checks all the boxes.
Given that many of the older developed areas
that have contaminated sites are also building out solar power, and pushing electricity prices into the negative, I believe that this could be set up to run full tilt, when power was cheap, and idle
when it is expensive.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254251962...
Certainly what comes out of the machine will not be living.
More narrowly, Paul Stamets has worked a lot on mycroremediation — remediating with fungi.
So... he invented the ocean?
In practice, there are multiple vats. The first stage has algae growing, which sequesters the heavy metals. The next stages follow other kinds of ecosystems, such as organisms from swamps. He will mix samples from multiple ecosystems that normally don’t mix so that some kind of novel, self-organizing ecosystem can form around the pollutant.
Then it is measuring and monitoring the contaminants. With the superfund site, he was tracking presence of the top ten pollutants on the EPA list. However, he also shows how people can use much simpler, non-industrial tests — using samples from say, uncontaminated lake water nearby and use a microscope to see if the water being treated will kill those microorganisms. This allows for remediation to be executed by people who don’t have access to labs, but still need a way to test their water.
A much simpler version of this that follows the same design principles is capable of local, onsite treatment of ordinary black water.
Consider if organism A consumes organism B in a symbiotic way. E.g., organism B makes berries.
Then, we engineer A to seek out and consume DDT, perhaps by making DDT delicious or fragrant to A.
Unexpected consequence: organism B evolves to produce berries that are absolutely redolent with DDT.
This might happen centuries later, due to the DDT-phillic genes outlasting the presence of artificial DDT in the environment, or it could happen much sooner, or it might never happen. Hard to know. “Life finds a way.”
…who is this? This guy [1]?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Todd_(Canadian_biologist)
"SCS Foundation News and Announcements 2025"
https://www.chimia.ch/chimia/article/download/2025_885/2025_...
Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) are highly recalcitrant and toxic compounds that pose a profound threat to ecosystems across the world. One of the most notorious representatives of this class of chemicals is hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) – a known human carcinogen – a specific isomer of which was used as the insecticide Lindane.
...
In 2021, the groups of Morandi and Waldvogel disclosed a vicinal dihalide shuttle reaction under electrochemical conditions, with which HCH could be fully dechlorinated. In the present work, instead of transferring chlorine to another molecule, we sought to sequester it as an innocuous inorganic chloride salt, which is preferable for large-scale application.
Here's the free-to-read Accepted Manuscript version of the earlier 2021 publication:
"Merging shuttle reactions and paired electrolysis for reversible vicinal dihalogenations"
https://ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/chab/organ...