A group of scientists at the University of Torino, Italy have come up with a new way to degrade asbestos from the environment. According to an article in Chemistry News, a publication of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Dr. Bice Fubini and his colleagues at the university have honed a new procedure that could be developed into a tool for bioremediation of asbestos contaminated environments.

In technical terms, the scientists were able to degrade chrysotile asbestos - the most common form of the mineral - using a combination of oxalic acid and ultrasound treatment.  Oxalic acid acts as a chelating agent, binding to the magnesium in the asbestos. Together with the ultrasound, this disrupts the mineral structure, breaking down the long fibers that make the asbestos species carcinogenic. The resulting product is mainly an amorphous solid, with small amounts of mineral fibers that are unregulated and believed to be harmless.

Fubini hopes that utilization of this clean-up method can begin in the not so distant future. “Future development will be needed to adapt the method to a large influx of fibers suspended in water, and may require us to find out the optimal chelating agent concentration. But once found it could be applied to polluted waters, eluates from disused mines, and so on,” Fubini stated in a press release.

Mike Hochella, professor of mineralogy and geochemistry at Virginia Tech, said he was impressed with the results. “The Fubini group has long been recognized as one of the best labs in the world for the study of fibrous silicates, and they have had many breakthrough discoveries. This paper appears to be another breakthrough,” Hochella said. “In the earth, these fibers may persist for as long as millions of years. In an organism, they may persist from years to decades. Under the treatment described in this paper, they persist for less than 24 hours. This technique has great potential as a remediation tool, and it may be relatively easy to implement.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 9:57 am and is filed under Asbestos Exposure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. Responses are currently closed, but you trackback from your own site.