Faculty-Student Research Team Tackles Pollutants
Associate Professor of Biology Frank Caccavo, Jr., and other researchers
are racing the clock to keep radioactive wastes in Southeastern
Washington's groundwater from reaching the Columbia River. Carried
by a slow-moving aquifer, these toxic leftovers from atomic bomb
production at the Hanford Site in Richland, Wash., could reach the
Columbia within 30 years and wreak ecological havoc downstream.
Caccavo and his students, along with research partners at Pacific
Northwest National Laboratories in Richland and at Montana State
University, are exploring a technique called bioaugmentation that
uses bacteria to neutralize pollutants. Caccavo's team is studying
the Shewanella alga organism, which metabolizes toxic metals dissolved
in water and converts the metal molecules to a state where they
bond to solid particles. Attached to solids, the pollutants' migration
is significantly slowed if not stalled.
"The engineers at Hanford believe the metals, if undisturbed,
would remain in that state for several decades and would represent
a much less immediate threat to the Columbia," says Caccavo,
who joined Whitworth's faculty in 2000.
With a grant from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trusts, Caccavo's
research team conducted experiments that confirmed the Shewanella
algae can survive in the Hanford aquifer, if provided with a particular
nutrient, and would not significantly affect the local ecology.
They also discovered that the bacteria don't survive in high numbers,
so Caccavo is seeking new funding to explore techniques for increasing
the survival rate.
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