Mycologist Paul Stamets lists 6 ways the mycelium fungus can
help save the World: cleaning polluted soil, making insecticides, treating
smallpox and even flu viruses.
Cleaning Up Oil Spills:Stamets laid some mycelium on an oil spill as
part of an experiment to compare it with other solutions. The fungi consumed
the oil, broke the carbon hydrogen bonds and re-manufactured it into
carbohydrates. Before long, insects were pulled into the pile, then fowls came
to eat the bugs, the birds dropped vegetation seeds and a new biological system
was on in route. “Our pile became an oasis of life,” Stamets said. “The other
piles were dead, dark and stinky.”
Absorbing Farm
Pollution: Encouraged by the oil test, Stamets then made
burlap sacks loaded with garbage and mycelium and put them downstream of farms
to channel overflow. “We’ve seen a dramatic decrease in the amount of
coliforms,” he said, noting that in a few days the mushrooms had reduced the
bacteria by 10,000 times.
Fighting off Disease: Stamets presents a mushroom called agarikon. It lives just in
old-development forests, is believed to be wiped out in Europe and is exceptionally
uncommon in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. He attempted to test the fungus with
the Department of Defense and found that three strains are exceptionally
dynamic against pox viruses and three are profoundly dynamic against the season’s
cold flu virus. “I then think that we can make the argument that we should save
the old-growth forest as a matter of national defense,” Stamets said.
Combating Insects: Termites, carpenter ants and different bugs can be a scourge to individual’s
homes, and some fungus-based insecticides spray don't work in light of the fact
that the animals know to evade the spores. So Stamets built up a mycelium that
didn’t create spores and laid it down in his home. “The ants were attracted to
the mycelium, because there’s no spores,” he said. “They gave it to the queen.
One week later, I had no sawdust piles whatsoever.” Then, mushrooms grew out of
the insect carcasses, which had spores and cautioned different ants to maintain
a strategic distance from the house altogether.
Re-Greening the Planet: One of Stamets’ innovations are the life box, which incorporates
fungi spores that you add to soil, water and cardboard. That makes a rich
environment to plant different seeds, similar to corns, beans, squash and
onions for refugee populations. You can likewise utilize tree seeds to kick-off
a new forest. “You end up growing — potentially — an old-growth forest from a
cardboard box,” he says.
Creating A Sustainable
Fuel Source: Perhaps the most remarkable guarantee of
mycelium is the possibility to move us away from non-renewable energy source in
a maintainable, earth-accommodating way. Rather than squandering vitality going
straightforwardly from cellulose to ethanol, he utilizes mycelium as a
go-between, enabling the fungus to normally convert over to cellulose into
fungal sugars. “I think that we need to be ecologically intelligent about the
generation of fuels,” Stamets said. “So, we build the carbon banks on the
planet, renew the soils.”