Nuclear Meltdowns, Cannabis and You…oh, and Japan!
For the past 20 + years, since the Nuclear Meltdown in Chernobyl, Cannabis has been used to clean up radioactive waste that was left behind in the soil and water of the surrounding area. A technique called "phytoremediation" uses certain plants to leech these elements from the soil… guess which one is one of the best at that task? Good old industrial hemp, cannabis' non-drug cousin that our government bans because our police are too uneducated to tell the difference. All in all, the field of phytoextraction seems to be one of the most promising in the efforts to clean up the hundreds of thousands of sites worldwide (30,000 in the US alone, according to the EPA), that require hazardous waste treatment. Even if only modestly successful, the use of plants as contaminant removers could reduce cleanup costs considerably. Even more promising, phytoextraction is only one aspect of the whole field of phytoremediation, in which plants are being used not only to remove toxins, but sometimes to break them down (phytotransformation), enhance microbial activity (phytostimulation), or prevent leaching of contaminants in the first place (phytostabalization). In Belarus, site of the original Chernobyl disaster, they are not only using the hemp to clean up the soil, they're making money on the processing of that hemp into biofuel.
This technique of hemp phytoremediation has applications that extend beyond nuclear accident cleanups. If the prohibition of hemp farming was lifted and the industry was allowed to flourish, there could be thousands of new jobs created and a cleaner environment for all.
Plants break down or degrade organic pollutants and stabilize metal contaminants by acting as filters or traps.
Phytoremediation with industrial hemp could be used at many of these sites. Unfortunately, the U.S. government refuses to legalize the cultivation of industrial hemp and clings to the obsolete myth that it is a drug.
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