Can mushrooms help save the Gulf Coast?

Local woman uses petro-eating fungi to clean oil spills in the Amazon Basin
BY BRIDGET DEGNAN

Mushrooms may be a tasty topping for steaks and hamburgers fresh off the grill, but didn't anybody ever stop to think that mushrooms get hungry too? They do; and according to Riverhead resident Lindsay Ofrias, oil is topping their menu.

New research in Ecuador's Amazon Basin, led by Lindsay Ofrias' Clean Up Oil Waste Project in Ecuador, is pioneering an all-natural method for oil waste cleanup using a mushroom's rootlike mycelia, the fiberlike threads that decompose waste beneath a mushroom's cap. She hopes to expand her project into the Gulf of Mexico, where billions of gallons of oil are waiting to be removed once the catastrophic leak is contained.

“Fungi break down" they're the decomposers for the natural environment,” Ms. Ofrias said. “What scientists have been doing is, they've been acclimatizing the mushrooms to be familiar with petrol and recognize it as a nutrient. They're training the mycelium to eat oil.”

Last year, scientists involved in Ms. Ofrias' project planted oyster mushroom spores into a section of Amazon Basin soil contaminated by leftover waste from a Chevron-Texaco drilling site 20 years earlier. Within weeks, a network of mushroom mycelia threaded its way through the oil-contaminated soil. Today, roughly one year later, the soil is oil free.

“It was so wonderful,” Ms. Ofrias said. “The soil had all sorts of insects and worms. There was no evidence that the oil had ever been there. The soil that didn't have the mycelium, it still looked the same �" oily. You could smell it, you could see it, and there was no life.”

The reason why mushrooms are so effective at reducing oil pollution, Ms. Ofrias said, is because they've already been decomposing natural waste for thousands of years. A mushroom's rootlike mycelia, she said, break down complex chemical bonds into simpler bonds that are safe for the environment and tasty for the mushroom. Because the chemical structure of wood chips and other natural wastes are similar in structure to many chemical pollutants, she said, scientists can actually trick a mushroom into eating man-made pollution. Simply put, scientists can harness nature's own purifier and train it to target oil.

“It's so crazy,” Ms. Ofrias said. “You can use a mushroom's mycelia for almost anything �" purifying water, soil, even for health problems!”

Ms. Ofrias became interested in mycoremediation, which is the technical term for mushroom-based oil removal, when she first visited Ecuador's Amazon Basin in 2005. She was horrified by what she saw. Hundreds of oil-filled pits littered the once lush rainforest territory. The pools of oil, she said, have become the subject of one of the largest environmental lawsuits in history, Maria Aguinda vs. Chevron Texaco.

“When you drill oil, there's a good percentage that's so difficult to refine, that it's just not economical to do so,” Ms. Ofrias said. “Chevron left all these crude-oil pits that are too difficult to refine in pools all over Ecuador … they allegedly dumped over 18.5 billion gallons of oil into the Amazon Basin over a 20-year span.”

After her visit to Ecuador in 2005, Ms. Ofrias immediately began working on a plan to help renew the country's oil-plagued soil. She partnered with a nonprofit group in California called Amazon Mycorenewal and launched the Clean Up Oil Waste Project in 2009. By barricading the oil pits in Ecuador with burlap sacs filled with mushroom mycelia, the project has been able to contain the oil pools in the surrounding region and renew the soil.

Little did Ms. Ofrias know when she first founded the project that her homegrown effort would soon become a pivotal hope in plans to remove oil from the Gulf of Mexico.

“I think that we could probably implement what we're doing in Ecuador in the Gulf,” she said. “People can start this project in their backyard … It's something almost anyone can learn. As long as you're providing the mycelia with a food source, you can grow this on your own.”

Because the project enables people to take care of their environment without government aid or big company spending, Ms. Ofrias believes mycoremediation could be the most promising solution to oil waste, and she is currently drafting plans to help implement the project along the Gulf Coast. Residents looking to support Ms. Ofrias' project can purchase her homemade soap being sold at the Garden of Eve in Riverhead. All proceeds go directly toward the project.

“Mycoremediation gets individuals and communities participating in the solution so that you're not dependent on a company saying they're going to fix it,” she said. “It's very empowering to be a part of that process … Saying we're against BP, Chevron, or Texaco doesn't really solve anything. By saying we're using oil, we have to accept the risk that accidents can happen and continue looking for alternative sources of energy.”