Nanoparticles seek and destroy groundwater toxins
Published on by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network in Technology
Iron nanoparticles encapsulated in a rust-preventing polymer coating could hold incredible potential for cleaning up groundwater contaminated with toxic chemicals, a leading water expert says. Hundreds of sites around Sydney where soils have been contaminated from past industrial waste, landfills and gas leaks are known to exist, including the former HMAS Platypus submarine base in Neutral Bay and the Orica site in Botany Bay. "Toxic contamination of soils is an historical problem," says Dr Denis O'Carroll, a visiting academic at the UNSW Water Research Lab. "Until the 1970s, people wrongly believed that if we put these toxins into the ground they would simply disappear - that the subsurface would act as a natural filtration unit." "The possibility of this waste polluting the environment, and potentially contaminating groundwater sources and remaining there for decades was ignored," he says.
Read more: http://j.mp/KS7qio