Will we be using moss to remove lead from the drinking water in the future?
You should definitely do something about it if you have lead (Pb) in your drinking water! This chemical element is a soft and malleable metal that have traditionally been used in lots of different areas, such as paint, in gas/fuel, to shield from x-rays, and in pipes that bring water into the house. However, it has been proven to pretty harmful to us humans since it affects the brain and nervous system. It’s especially dangerous for developing children as well as pregnant women, but it can also be toxic to anyone that is in contact with it. It's not all that dangerous to get in contact with small amounts of it, but it will accumulate inside your body for a long time, so long-term exposure is very bad.
A drinking water pipe; the silvery part on the right is lead. Image by Wikimedia user KBreker, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
This means that lead is definitely not something you want to have in your drinking water! Luckily most of us get water that is already treated for lead and other toxic chemicals, so we don’t have to worry about it. However, it is a problem for many people around the world, and the current solutions is to either have a reverse osmosis device to remove the lead, or have an active coal filter. The reverse osmosis device is great, but very expensive. The active coal is okay, but a bit cheaper. Anyway, in this post I want to write about a new discovery where scientists were able to purify lead from the water source by using moss!
How lead end up in the drinking water in the first place
It’s worth keeping in mind that lead is generally not found in a pure state in nature. Most of the lead we are exposed to have been mined and refined, and ended up in products used by humans. The previously most common sources of lead contamination was from paint used to paint houses and other buildings, as well as from gas/fuel that people put in their vehicles to drive. Luckily most of these sources are now lead-free due to environmental concerns, which is great, but there’s still a lot of lead around, especially at water sources close to mining operations (no, not cryptomining).
In order for lead to get into the drinking water it would need to end up in a river that would eventually find its way to a drinking water source. When it was common to have lead in your fuel, lots of it would directly end up in rivers since cars drove close to these, which contaminated several drinking water sources.
A lead cube. Image is public Domain.
Removing lead by using moss
Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS) in Japan have been testing the metal-absorbent abilities of mosses, and made a pretty cool discovery with the species Funaria hygrometrica. This moss is found in very moist places that are contaminated by heavy metals, and it seem to be able to absorb lead from the water!
The moss is able to do this by incorporating the lead particles into its own cell wall as well as a storing some of the lead in the membrane of organelles inside the cell. After 20 hours the moss is able to absorb as much as 75 % of its own dry weight in lead particles, making it an extremely efficient lead absorber!
What might be even more interesting is that the cell wall seemed to continue to absorb lead even after it was removed from the living moss’ cells. This would mean that it has a chemical way of absorbing it without using stored energy, and could potentially uncover secrets to removing heavy metals from water if someone is able to figure out how the cell wall does this. The scientists are not exactly sure how this happens, but theorize that polygalacturonic acid is involved in the process somehow, since this is the major different between the cell wall of this moss, and the cell walls of other photosynthetic organisms.
A close-up image of Funaria hygrometrica. Photo by Wikimedia Commons user Sanja565658, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Why use moss when we have other solutions?
You probably wonder why we should bother with the moss since we already have other solutions. There are however a few good reasons; 1) the reverse osmosis system is both expensive and uses a big amount of energy, and 2) the systems are based on fossil fuels and are not environmental-friendly at all.
The scientists believe that this could potentially be a great source of lead-removal at mining sites that often pollute with contaminated waters, and other sites where there is a high level of lead. It will be interesting to see if this nice theory ends up being viable to pursue, and it might not be easy to make this useable in real conditions. However, we will have to wait and see!
By using moss instead of the other systems for removing lead, we have a green solution to keeping the drinking water safe instead of using lots of energy to accomplish the same task! When we are using plants or other organisms that uses photosynthesis to get their energy to accomplish tasks, we are talking about phytoremediation, which I think will become more popular in the future when we want these organisms to do tasks essentially for free (expect for maybe some water and some nutrients).
Thanks for reading
Thanks for reading my post about lead poisoning and removal of lead from drinking water. If you want to check out the sources, then they are found in the relevant parts of the text. You could also click here to go directly to the paper out the discovery of the absorption of lead by the moss. Have a nice day, and don't forget to leave your comments below!
Shame it took humanity so long to figure out the dangers of lead before it got spread out all over the place, but this sounds like an interesting potential solution.
How is the situation in Norway? I haven't heard of any lead pollution since I've lived here, so I assume it isn't a problem. The water is sooo good here!
Yeah, that's true. I think we banned lead-based fuel in Norway in the 80s, and ammunition with lead was banned just 10 years or so ago.
It's not a problem in Norway (or any other rich country) anymore, except if you work at a place that handles lead. This would typically be if you are working with car batteries on a regular basis. You could of course get poisoned if you spend a lot of time in buildings that have very old paint, or store acidic products such as wine in containers made from ceramics. But there are no problems with the drinking water here in Norway at most times.
But what about third world countries???
The situation is much dismal in poor countries thanks to corruption and malfeasance.
In my country arsenic contamination is taking toll and to make it worse there is no one to take notice or do something about it.
Third world countries have a lot more problems with lead in their drinking water than industrial/rich countries. Regions with mining operations close to drinking water are probably the ones who are most exposed to lead poisoning. Maybe some countries even still allow to have lead in the fuel (I sadly have no idea)?
Arsenic contamination is also a huge problem that can have fatal consequences! It sucks that no one is doing anything about it, @xabi :(
Thank you very much for the upvote ;)
Drinking water is not safe for drinking if it contains lead & arsenic. According to WHO Lead is present in tap water to some extent as a result of its dissolution from natural sources, but major source is household plumbing systems which includes the pipes, solder,fittings or service connections. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipes also contain lead compounds that can be leached from them and result in high lead concentrations in drinking-water. So it's the problem of all humanity. Domestic RO Plant are used for removing ions from water when i was in water treatment business. Glad to know that moss is doing a great job for reducing heavy mineral from water, Great discovery indeed. It's better to use green solution instead of spending heavy money. Thanks for sharing:)
Yeah, you're absolutely right! Both lead and arsenic are chemicals that you definitely don't want in your drinking water, but too often they end up there anyway..
I agree!
But its far too early to have an ecomical and optimal green solution technology for lead removal. Concentrated research and through understanding of the phenomena is required to make it sustainable.
yes still it's an early days, but it doesn't cost you nothing so why not try for this. Mosses grow randomly in shady and wet condition. we should try this easy remedy and it will cast us nothing
Of course. Going from the discovery of finding out that this moss can remove lead to the point where it can be used by the industrial sites who contaminate with lead can take many years at best, and might not even be viable at all. I have no idea how difficult it would be to figure out the mechanism behind the lead removal and get it to an operational device, but it could probably be very complex.
This is a really nice (and green) way to clean the water from all heavy metals (and not only lead, if I read well). Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
You're welcome, @lemouth :)
As far as I understand lead is the only thing this moss is really good at absorbing from the water. It has some capacity to absorb gold (11.3 % absorbed), but I don't think gold is really that harmful. It also absorbed around 5 % of chromium, thallium and platinum, but that is very little compared to the 74 % absorption rate of lead. Source: Table 1 in the article.
I see. I guess anything can be harmful, depending on the amount, Just for the fun in trying to find a way to get cleaned water easily, maybe could we imagine different types of mosses absorbing different metals. But maybe I am just dreaming :)
Thanks for the extra info.
Hehe, yeah, imagine having several different species of mosses that your water would filtrate trough before reaching your faucet. It would for sure look really cool ;) Seems very unlikely. What we can hope for is for someone smart to be able to understand the mechanism behind how the cell wall removes the lead from the water, and maybe be able to replicate this mechanism in another device. If we could make something like that, then this discovery could potentially save lots of lives!
Being a chemical engineer, I loved this article about lead contamination.
During my Masters I my self did a project to collect the sample of local ground water to find the extent of arsenic contamination.
Sadly 80% of ground water in our city was arsenic contaminated.
Heavy metals are carcinogenic and should must be monitored closely in our food chain.
And here have a look at moss growing in my garden, its amazing and beautiful.
Here is the link of my post on moss.
https://steemit.com/colorchallenge/@xabi/color-challenge-thursday-green-this-is-the-moss
I'm glad to hear that you liked it, @xabi.
That sound like a very interesting project for your Masters, but it's sad to hear that so much water was contaminated! Was it naturally occurring, or from industry in the area?
No it is not naturally occurring and that's what makes me more angry.
I get why you are angry then! This is a good example of Tragedy of the Commoms where a rich company will destroy the community resource (in this case the drinking water), while the community will have to find a solution since the company does not care.
ineed it's a sad news. It was not naturally occuring. it was occured due to ill-planning, unawareness of environmental aspect, lack of care and corruption:(.
Ouch, that sucks..
This is a nice article. I'm wondering if earthenware pots will help in removing lead content in water. I have heard that it is capable of removing many impurities but not sure if it can be used for removing lead from water.
Thank you. That's a good question, but I also don't know the answer. What I do know is that glazed ceramics often increase the level of lead in the fluid that is stored in it, but I don't think that would be a problem with earthenware pots.
Thanks for sharing the good news
actually i ddnt know about this but since am near rocks I will use more of rock water than piped or treated water.
Nice advice
You're welcome. Yeah, there is probably no lead in that type of water, but the pipes inside your house could potentially have it if they are really old. But most likely not ;)
If only the Romans had known about this 8-).
Hehe, maybe things would have turned out differently for the Roman empire if they had known about this? I bet they didn't even know that lead poisoning was a problem, because it seems pretty difficult to figure that the pots used for storing drinks is the cause of the health problems they had.
This is a great discovery! If scientists find out the mechanism behind this, we probably can use it for more than lead removal.
Yeah, it has huge potential! It surely is an amazing discovery, but it could take a long time before we find out anything about how this works, or if its replicable under other conditions.
Did you know that a popular noodle brand (In India) developed by Nestle was taken to court because they had Lead in their noodles. They were banned for a while and then they had to fix their formula or they might have bribed the officials well. It makes you think why the government can't do shit.
Wow, I'm not surprised. A lot of big corporations have signed on to the U.N.'s published depopulation agenda. Bill Gates was thrown out of India, too, because he was killing, sterilizing, and paralyzing teenage girls there with his Gardasil vaccine program there. This agenda is why the moss to remove lead from water, and the algae to remove radiation from the ocean will never be allowed out of the labs for wide adoption use. We will have to build our own moss-based and other plant-based water filters. Many sewage treatment facilities use plants to help clean water, but that's only for the water flowing out of our homes, not the water flowing into our homes.
The world is waking up. These pollutants foisted on entire populations are no accident.
Do you follow David Icke's research?
No. I follow Dr. Steven Greer. I cannot believe Icke's premise that the Queen is a Lizard, but I can believe she answers to one. The Lizard (serpent) being Satan himself. Her husband, son, and grandson have all spoken publicly in favor of depopulating the earth. I have no doubt the Queen subscribes to this clearly Satanic agenda, herself.
Greer's got a lot of government whistle blowers working with him, and he has met real E.T.'s, who have the whole universe at their feet, and have no need to be preying on anyone or anything on Earth.
So if an "alien" is doing evil, it's a human in disguise. That's what humans do.
I'm really glad people are waking up to different perspectives than following the norm.
The internet is a wonderful thing that we can all use to help wake each other up :-) How many centuries have we lived with "elites" hiding the evil they were doing by controlling what the world knew, by smashing presses and burning books. Now they are desperate to shut down the internet, but the genie's out of the bottle and humanity won't put up with suppression anymore.
Wow, that's insane! But why would they have lead in the noodles in the first place?
Because lead makes people dumber. Seriously, it affects the human brain. I can go on and on about how everything is linked and it's a big scam but then it'll be too much for a comment. Look into David Icke. You shall know the answers.
Alright, I see the point you're trying to make. I guess we can just agree to disagree with this, because I'm not really into all these types of conspiracies :)
It's not a conspiracy anymore...
It's proven. I'm not pulling things out of the ether.
I don't mean to say that lead being dangerous is a conspiracy, because that has absolutely been problem. However, I see that David Icke guy talk about the world being run by reptilian humanoids, which seems very unlikely.
If people could look into it with an open mind, it would make sense. No point in explaining something to people who don't want to undo the conditioning and programming we've been through.