FISHING FOR LEAD: USING FISH BONES TO CLEAN SOILS AT FIRING RANGE SITES
Nosbisch, Bob, University Communications.
New Mexico State University News Release, 10 Oct 2005

Judith Wright uses fish bones to remove lead, uranium, TNT, and heavy metals during environmental remediation via a technology known as phosphate-induced metal stabilization (PIMS). Wright, of PIMS NW Inc., and James Conca, director of the Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring and Research Center in New Mexico State University's College of Engineering, have developed Apatite II™, an efficient method of using processed fish bones to remove metal contaminants from water and soil. According to Conca, Wright discovered the possibilities of fishbone as a graduate student in geology at Oregon State University. She examined the fossils of tiny animals that first used apatite in the Cambrian period, more than 500 million years ago. These animals, called conodonts, were small creatures with tooth-like hard parts the size of a grain of sand that they used to eat their way into their prey. Teeth and bones are made up of the mineral apatite or calcium hydroxy-phosphate. Apatite has the ability to fit different elements into its structure by replacing one of its components with another element. Lead, uranium, manganese, plutonium, and strontium can replace calcium; carbonate can replace phosphate; and fluorine and chlorine can replace hydroxyl. By studying the conodont chemistry and that of more recent fish, Wright discovered that the fossils were full of heavy metals that had been taken up by their teeth and bones after death when they lay on the ocean bottom. She determined that once they were incorporated into the teeth and bones, these metals were stable for millions of years. When Wright began working in the field of environmental remediation, she realized that fish bones could be an ideal material for removing metals from contaminated water and soil. The bones can also buffer the acidity or alkalinity of water. Working with Conca at NMSU over a period of years, Wright has implemented this technology to clean up lead and copper at Camp Stanley, a military firing range in Boerne, TX, and lead, cadmium, and zinc in acid mine drainage at the Success Mine and Mill site in northern Idaho. Five pounds of fish bones will remove up to a pound of contaminants. Forty dollars' worth of fish bones will clean more than a million gallons of water contaminated with lead and more than a ton of contaminated soil. Wright and Conca have obtained a patent on this technology. In recent work, Wright, Geof Smith of NMSU's biology department, and student Marissa Martinez have examined the use of the technology to clean up TNT and perchlorate in contaminated military soils.

 

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