In this article we will look at 3 plants that are outstanding at helping people survive a water crisis by providing water pollution solutions, just like all plants are capable of cleaning the air, soil, and water around them these particular ones really stand out for cleaning water. Duckweed, Cattails and Sunflowers, making use of these plants as a water pollution solution is a terrific plan, after all Mother Nature is the expert in sprucing up her own back yard.
The first time I came across this idea is when I was searching for knowledge on aquaponics and discovered duckweed, it grows very fast and you can put in your aquaponics greenhouse to provide food for the fish. But its other properties are why I have included it in this list.
Why use Duckweed as a water pollution solution.
The water plant Duckweed (Lemna minor L.) has many uses.
It grows incredibly fast, in optimum conditions, it can double its weight in in approximately one day making it an excellent option for food production and as a biomass for fuel, when produced in the right conditions it has more starch than corn and then if you put it through a distillation process it makes perfectly good ethanol.
It is able to absorb excess nitrogen, phosphorous and other contaminants from the water. Bio mining is another way to use the plant. The idea involves digging up tainted subsoil and mixing it with water and then planting the duckweed on top where it then removes the phosphate, down to minute particles, from the water and then itself is harvested and processed. The remaining sediment can also be used for different things.
There is a incredible amount of exploration of the uses for duckweed, it is a useful process to remove harmful particles from the water and then it's biomass can also be used for fertilizer, animal feed and distilling into ethanol and the list goes on. All things considered Duckweed is a fabulous, tiny plant that could aid us to survive a water crisis by providing us a water pollution solution.
Why use Cattails for a .
To procure a water pollution solution to survive a water crisis we are focusing on Cattails (Typha spp) next. With the aid of cattails one man has done just that, his name is Jeremiah Jackson, Ph.D., P.E., researched a low tech version of a naturally occurring style water filter that could be created with material available locally. Using sand and cattails he planted approxiately 1 foot apart in about 12 sq. ft., he reduced the amount of arsenic from quantities ussually found in places such as rural India to levels less than what the WHO considers to be safe for human use. At the estimated cost of $0.21 for the treatment of 1000 gallons compared to the normal cost of arsenic removalgetting the arsenic out which is known to be anywhere from, $53 to $300 per 1000 gal.
Cattails have been used for a long time in the remediation of water, Cattails are an aggressive species and can be considered invasive but they are a great water filter and if they are to be taken out they should be mechanically harvested and tested for harmful material.
How to use Sunflowers as a water pollution solution.
Sunflowers ( Helianthus sp) are really good at absorbing harmful substances and accumulating them in their roots. Sunflowers are thought to be a natural hyper-accumulator, that is a plant that can remove large amounts of contaminants without harm to itself. Sunflowers can remove chromium, copper, manganese, lead and zinc from the earth and keep it from flowing into the local water table.
An article dated Feb 29 1996 in the Wall Street Journal documented how a company from NJ called Phytotech developed a strain of sunflowers that could remove even more harmful material then normal sunflowers. These sunflowers were planted on a piece of styrofoam in a pond near Chernobyl and 12 days later they measured the amounts of cesium and strontium concentrations in the roots and found them to be 8000 times and 2000 times, respectively, more than what was left in the water. Planting sunflowers in Fukishima did not show as promising a result, perhaps more study is needed to understand the differences in each environment No matter what, there is enough studies out there to say emphtically that plants filter water.
There is a multitude of information on the web talking about water pollution solutions and how we will be able to survive a water crisis, a lot more than what can be documented here. Without doubt and with the proper use of our natural resources we should be able to clean up the environment in a minimilistic way and perhaps learn something about balancing our needs with the limited resources of our planet.
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Some other great articles I am sure you will like are
http://survivalshop.brentmart.com/category/survival-water-crisis/
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