Progress 10/01/08 to 09/30/13
Outputs
Target Audience: Dr. Thomas and Ben Coppenger have submitted numerous reports on the work in progress to St Johns River Water Management District Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Students were used to conduct this research under the supervision of laboratory managers and their technicians. All personnel were familiarized with the US EPA QA/QC schemes and were required to follow them. One doctoral dissertation and one masters thesis were generated during the course of this investigation. Several field technicians, botanists, biologists, and engineers from Florida’s St. Johns Water Management District (SJRWMD) received professional development. Faculty at the unversity of Florida can also claim professional development as a result of these studies. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Florida’s St. Johns Water Management District (SJRWMD) funded this project. In return they received quarterly progress reports and all publications such as thesis, dissertations, and manuscripts. Additionally, they were sent all of the raw data in spreadsheet format What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The St. Johns Water Management District (SJRWMD) oversees more than 23,000 acres bordering Lake Apopka (which is near Orlando, Florida) that have been contaminated with DDT for the last forty years. Work is under progress in remediating this site. Feasibility and optimization of various procedures for the bioremediation of DDT and its daughter products, DDE and DDD, were investigated and/or instituted.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2011
Citation:
Microcosm studies on the degradation of o,p- and p,p-DDT, DDE, and DDD in a muck soil , J. E. Thomas, H. Gohil, World J Microbiol Biotechnol, 27(3):619-625, 2011, DOI 10.1007/s11274-010-0497-1,
- Type:
Theses/Dissertations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
"Enhanced degradation of DDT via application of brewery waste product"
Coppenger, Benjamin
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Submitted
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Stimulation of anaerobic biodegradation of DDT and its metabolites in a muck soil: laboratory microcosm and mesocosm studies , A.V. Ogram, J.E. Thomas, H. Gohil, Journal of Applied Microbiology 2013
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Progress 10/01/11 to 09/30/12
Outputs
OUTPUTS: The information was presented by Benjamin Coppenger, graduate student, in a poster titled "Bioremediation of DDE, DDD, and DDT in Sandy Soil from Site ZSS3027 in Field ZSE-J in the Lake Apopka North Shore Restoration Area" at the Sept. 6, 2012 Student Forum, Soil and Water Science, University of Florida. Mr. Coppenger also gave an oral presentation at Coastal Environmental Soil Science Conference, St. Augustine Nov. 1-3, 2012. Chapters of his thesis were shared and discussed with Florida's St. Johns Water Management District (SJRWMD). PARTICIPANTS: Benjamin Coppenger - Master's graduate student - Soil and Water Science Department, University of Florida, Gainesvlle, FL Dr. John E. Thomas - graduate committee chair - Soil and Water Science Department, University of Florida, Gainesvlle, FL Dr. George Hochmuth - committee member - Soil and Water Science Department, University of Florida, Gainesvlle, FL Dr. Jeffery Rollins - committee member - Plant Pathology, University of Florida, Gainesvlle, FL Pamela Bowen - Liason associated with St. Johns Water management District Moshik Doron - Laboratory technician assisting Dr. Thomas and Ben Coppenger TARGET AUDIENCES: Dr. Thomas and Ben Coppenger have submitted numerous reports on the work in progress to St Johns River Water Management District, Palatka, FL PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: A 2-month revision in deadlines for various parts of the project were necessitated by a 2012 tropical storm ruining a greenhouse study. Final completion deadline was not affected.
Impacts
OUTCOME: DDT is an organochlorine pesticide (OCP) that was almost completely banned in the United States in the 1970s due to the public negative attention given to DDT after the book "Silent Spring" questioned the usage of DDT. It is still used, however, for disease vector control with malaria-carrying mosquitos. Due to the low aqueous solubility of DDT and its degradation products with the tendency of this contaminant to bond strongly with soil organic matter, it still persists in soils today. The main purpose of this research is to test the feasibility of adding beer trub (a waste product of the brewery industry) as a bioenhancing agent for OCP degrading enzyme production by native fungi. Sandy soil from the Lake Apopka North Shore Restoration Area (NSRA) was taken to the University of Florida and sampled for four months to test the biodegradation rates of p,p' and o,p' isomers of DDE, DDD, and DDT (DDx) using various applications of brewery waste from 0 to 3% (v/w). The optimum amount was determined to be 1.8% beer trub volume to dry soil weight. IMPACT: For a real world application example, if the 1.8 % beer trub treatment was to be applied to an acre of land for the purpose of intensifying DDT degradation, approximately 13,245 kg of beer trub would be required. In order to produce this amount of beer trub, approximately 175,200 liters (46,283 gallons) of beer must be produced. Seeing how commercial breweries such as Anheuser Busch produce a few billion gallons of beer each year (answerparty.com), 46,282 gallons should not be an issue for the amount of trub that is needed in a 1.8 % solution. Due to the commercial availability of potential sources of beer trub, the idea of using an approximately 2 % beer trub solution to help remediate DDT contaminated soil is realistically viable
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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Progress 10/01/09 to 09/30/10
Outputs
OUTPUTS: The economic analysis conclusions were presented to and discussed with Florida's St. Johns Water Management District (SJRWMD). SJRWMD funded the project in the hopes of finding an inexpensive method of remediating 300 acres of DDT, DDE, and DDD contaminated soil. Several scenarios were subjected to a simple cost analysis to help determine the feasibility of each method. Each cost analysis included projected equipment costs and simple payroll costs. The analyses did not include insurance costs or other costs of doing business. As a result, the costs in this study represent minimum anticipated costs. PARTICIPANTS: Dr. John E. Thomas - PI participated by contacting landfill and equipment operators/manufacturers for cost estimates. TARGET AUDIENCES: Dr. Thomas has submitted the cost analysis report with price quotations to St. Johns River Water Management District PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Mesocosm studies are in progress to judge the effectiveness of using spent mushroom substrate from "oyster" and "Crimini" production to remove DDT, DDE and DDD contamination from a sandy soil.
Impacts
IMPACT: The North Shore Restoration Area (NSRA) of Lake Apopka, near Orlando, FL has been reported to contain significant amounts of persistent organochlorine pesticides and their metabolites, particularly DDT and its metabolites, DDD and DDE. The persistence of DDT and its metabolites likely results from the chemical stability of the compounds, low activities of organisms capable of metabolizing these compounds, and low biological availabilities due to high organic carbon contents in the soil and low water solubilities of these compounds. In order to develop an efficient system for mitigating the adverse human and environmental impacts of DDT, DDD, and DDE soil contamination at the NSRA, several different strategies were evaluated for the most economical way of remediating this land. OUTCOME: The final cost analysis gave a ranking of least to most in the order of water rinse ($402,061), Monerey Crimini Mushroom waste ($949,803), !500 L bioreactor ($1,442,873), Phillips Oyster Mushroom Farm waste ($2,747,966), 18L bioreactors ($3,839,695), 65L bioreactors($5,788,101), and soil removal to toxic dump ($41,350,179). Several assumptions were made prior to the water rinse method (irrigation) being considered viable. These assumptions include: 1) native fungi capable of degrading DDx are present in the soil, 2) inhibiting factors can be mitigated through the use of clean well water, and 3) a source of clean well water and power is readily available. Major cost factors were the 60 acre pivot irrigation system and manpower. Two sources of spent mushroom substrate (SMS) were considered. Phillips Mushroom Farms located in Pennsylvania who specialize in oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) and Monterey Mushrooms Inc.'s growing facility located in Zellwood, Florida, which is near the application site. Monterey Mushrooms Inc. specializes in growing "Crimini" mushrooms. Both mushrooms produce extracellular enzymes that are capable of degrading DDT, DDE and DDD. Both SMS methods would require manure spreaders to apply the SMS to the land and five 60-acre pivot irrigation systems. This assumes that power and water supplies are readily available. Bioreactors can be used to grow fungi that release extracellular enzymes into the liquid growth media. The contaminated soil can then be washed using these soluble enzymes either in situ or ex situ. The methods used for cost analysis assumed that the soil would stay in place and that the enzymes would be delivered via five 60-acre pivot irrigation systems. Once again, it was assumed that water and power are readily available as well as a building to house the equipment. Physically removing the contaminated soil is by far the fastest way to remove contamination from this area. It involves scraping the 0-12 inch layer of surface soil and transporting the soil to a landfill willing to accept toxic waste. It was assumed in the cost analysis that one track-hoe could load and fill all 37 trucks in one day (number of trucks required for one acre, assuming each truck holds 20 tons). It was also assumed that all trucks could be loaded, deliver the freight, and return to the site in one day.
Publications
- Thomas, J. 2010. Feasibility Study on Mycoremediation of 300 Acres in Lake Apopka's North Shore Restoration Area. Submitted to the St. Johns River Water Management District, Palatka, FL.(non-refereed)
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Progress 10/01/08 to 09/30/09
Outputs
OUTPUTS: The microcosm conclusions were presented to and discussed with Florida's St. Johns Water Management District (SJRWMD). SJRWMD funded the project in the hopes of finding an inexpensive method of remediating 23,000 acres of DDT, DDE, and DDD contaminated muck soil. Results from the initial microcosm studies (25 grams) have led to expansion in scale of the experiments to ~500 kg mesocosms. The information was also shared with the USDA multi-state Hatch committee W-1045 on "Mechanisms and Mitigation of Agrochemical Impacts on Human and Environmental Health". PARTICIPANTS: Individuals include: Dr. John E. Thomas - PI participated by conducting aerobic laboratory experiments and chemical analysis, managing laboratory, personnel and expenditures. Dr. A. Ogram - co-PI managed graduate student who conducts anaerobic laboratory experiments and chemical analysis George Ingram - technician assisting Dr. Thomas during latter phase of the project, Hiral Gohil - graduate student being mentored by Dr. Ogram TARGET AUDIENCES: Drs. Thomas and Ogram have submitted numerous reports on the work in progress to Florida's St. Johns River Water Management District Dr. Thomas has submitted a report to the USDA W-1045 multi-state Hatch committee on "Mechanisms and Mitigation of Agrochemical Impacts on Human and Environmental Health". PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: A 3-month revision in deadlines for various parts of the project was necessitated by a 2008 hurricane disrupting soil collection. Final completion deadline was not affected.
Impacts
IMPACT: The North Shore Restoration Area (NSRA) of Lake Apopka, near Orlando, FL has been reported to contain significant amounts of persistent organochlorine pesticides and their metabolites, particularly DDT and its metabolites, DDD and DDE. DDT and its degradation products, especially DDE, are highly resistant to in situ remediation. The persistence of DDT and its metabolites likely results from the chemical stability of the compounds, low activities of organisms capable of metabolizing these compounds, and low biological availabilities due to high organic carbon contents in the soil and low water solubilities of these compounds. In order to develop an efficient system for mitigating the adverse human and environmental impacts of DDT, DDD, and DDE soil contamination at the NSRA, we are investigating several different strategies using extracellular enzymes from white rot fungi to increase biological degradation rates. OUTCOME: To test the feasibility of DDx degradation by Phanerochaete chrysosporium, loading rates of 5, 10, and 20% were chosen. Corncob grits were saturated and autoclaved before inoculation. The fungi survived quite well as evidenced by visible white hyphae throughout the soil. However, no quantitative degradation difference was observed for any of these three loading rates compared to the control group. Since the extracellular enzyme system is only activated when there is insufficient N, C, or S, it is reasonable to assume that this organic and nitrogen-rich soil is not a conducive environment for such production. To circumvent this problem, another experiment was initiated wherein fungus load was at 20 % (corn cob grits are low in N) for one microcosm and secondly, an equal weight of inoculated corn cob grits to the 20% load was rinsed with deionized water and this rinsate was washed through the soil in a separate microcosm after filtration. The control was a third microcosm that was rinsed solely with sterile deionized water. Due largely to poor analytical precision (+/- 30%), no difference could be discerned between the control and the 20% load microcosms after 2 weeks. However, there was a measurable difference in the fungal rinsate microcosms with only 46.6% p,p-DDD, 45% p,p-DDE and 46.7% p,p-DDT remaining after 2 weeks compared to the DIW rinsed microcosms. We concluded that the extracellular enzymes are capable of degrading DDx isomers, but only if the enzyme production system is active. A final microcosm experiment was set up using 50% load and equivalent weight of inoculated corncob grits to be rinsed versus a deionized water rinse control. The fungus in this experiment was one that was isolated from the 10% control group used in the first microcosm experiment. After 3 weeks, p,p-DDD remaining in the soil was 84.1% for control DIW rinse, 25.3 % for 50% load and 27.9% for fungal rinsate. For p,p-DDE, the percentages were 69.2%, 25.4% and 29.0%, respectively, while the percentages of p,p-DDT remaining came to 86.8%, 25.2%, and 32.0% for control, 50% load, and fungal rinsate. This fungus was identified by PCR and gene sequencing as a Nectria species.
Publications
- Thomas, J. and Gohil, H. 2009. Degradation of o,p- and p,p- DDT, DDE, and DDD in a muck soil by P. chrysosporium and Nectria sp. Soil Microbiol. Biol. (pending)
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