It is most toxic in its ionic form, which dissolves and moves through water, threatening groundwater supplies. There are two basic ways to deal with soil contaminated with such toxic heavy metals, Vairavamurthy said. One is to mobilize the metals so they can be extracted from the soil and treated. The other is to convert the metals to a stable form that will not migrate into groundwater. The Brookhaven team looked for clues from nature.
Many microbes have the ability to detoxify contaminants.
Thiols form soluble complexes with toxic metals, which can then be excreted. The Brookhaven approach uses thiolsulfate to leach cadmium from the soil into water, then uses bacteria to convert dissolved cadmium thiosulfate to cadmium sulfide, an insoluble form, which precipitates out of the solution. Scripps plans to conduct acoustic research to more accurately measure global ocean temperatures. Based on previous research conducted in 1995, scientists found no evidence of short term changes in the abundance and distribution of marine mammals in response to the ATOC source transmissions. Acoustic thermometry is a method of obtaining information about the temperature field in the ocean from precise measurements of the travel times of sound pulses transmitted through the ocean.