Biochemistry - 23 July - Cell Biology and Radioactivity Blog Assignments for Week Twelve - Cell Biology and Radioactivity

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Sunflowers Absorb Nuclear Waste
With all that we learned about radiation from Fukushima hitting our shores, I wanted to offer a more hopeful vision for our future, embodied as the sunflower. Sunflowers were used in Chernobyl to clean up nuclear waste. This is because of their ability to soak up heavy metals, which dubs them as phytoremediators. Other plants can serve as phytoremediators, but sunflowers are especially effective as they are mass accumulators. Now, in Fukushima Japan, sunflowers are both a symbol of hope and a means to remove some of the toxicity that is the result of the 2011 tsunami. 



Comments

  1. Emily B.July 27, 2018 at 5:36 PM

    That is beautiful! That truly made my day. Thank you.

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  2. AmyJuly 29, 2018 at 2:44 PM

    I am super excited to have learned this!! Thank you for sharing. What a beautiful symbol of hope.

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  3. UnknownAugust 5, 2018 at 7:05 PM

    How lovely. This reminds me of a time when I was traveling in Romania, sunflower fields everywhere, and hearing a local person comment that within the past few years the flowers had all stopped their heliotropic behavior, no longer following the sun along its path but instead hanging their heads almost sad-like. The talk was as if they were canaries-in-the-coal-mine for some unknown ecological detriment. This memory, along with your post, makes me think of sunflowers as being sensitive and strong, remediators and indicators.

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