Bioremediation Companies Help The Environment Recover From Toxic Spills

By Annabelle Holman

When a major oil spill occurs, the environmental effects linger long after the story disappears from the daily news cycle. Crews are almost always shown rescuing local birds and other affected animals, but the most significant cleanup efforts today involve creatures that exist and work on a much smaller scale. Bioremediation companies use naturally occurring organisms to consume and destroy man-made pollutants.

These tiny creatures include yeasts, fungi, and bacteria in combination with their enzymes. They all play specific roles in filtering harmful substances, especially raw hydrocarbons. The processes they employ take time, and work most efficiently when the pollutants to be consumed are already part of their normal diet. To speed things up, artificial stimulation encourages them to work harder and longer.

Unlike other organisms, these creatures produce energy and take in nutrients while digesting harmful substances, effectively removing those chemicals them from the existing food chain, and preventing other creatures from being poisoned. Bio-stimulation encourages them to eat more than they would normally by increasing the oxygen supply through aeration, which helps them to metabolize substances more quickly. Bio-augmentation goes a step further.

Augmentation means adding large numbers of existing microbes to a polluted area where similar creatures currently thrive. When combined with the higher oxygen levels obtained through aeration, nature still takes its course, but much more rapidly. When the number and type of creatures are carefully balanced, toxins soon become sulfates, carbon dioxide, water, and other materials.

Biological remediation is not limited to bodies of water. During the past century, the pressures of World War II sidelined environmental concerns, and fuel storage units on military sites often leaked deep underground during the following years. Some contaminated the ground water, increasing local rates of certain diseases, including cancer. Cleanup traditionally involved earth-moving equipment, and a controlled storage facility.

Encouraging microbes do the dirty cleanup work reduces surface disruption and digging, and the process can be specifically targeted toward a particular contaminant. Rather than producing additional toxic disposal issues, microorganisms create by-products that actually serve as food for other local creatures. This method costs less over the long-term, and is ideal in locations that are physically difficult to reach.

Not all toxic contamination can be effectively removed biologically. There are some materials that even the hardiest bacteria cannot consume, and the size and extent of the pollution site is also important in determining whether this type of remediation will work as intended. Sites must be monitored to make sure toxins are steadily diminishing, and it takes micro-organisms longer to do their job when compared to mechanically removing and containing the topsoil.

Many companies choose this type of recovery because the final costs are around half those associated with earlier methods, including lowered insurance rates for employees not subjected to hazards. There are reduced concerns for the long-term safety and viability of storage sites, and there is virtually no chemical evaporation. When all conditions are ideal for this process, a balanced and healthy natural system can be restored in relatively short time.

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