KRisten Zelenka World Changing Response #4

Kristen Zelenka
World Changing #4

For my fourth response to World Changing, I decided to read an article entitled “Healing Polluted Land.” I chose this article because in lecture today we touched upon brown fields, which I learned are industrially contaminated areas in urban areas that can not be used anymore due to the pollution.

The article discussed that on the cutting edge of the Green Revolution is the process called “bioremediation” which is an organic process that involves the absorption of contaminants by plants who then process and release them into nonhazardous components (250). The plan is to grow plants in these brown fields and then let nature take its course in cleansing them. In order to make neighborhoods better, we need to take the worst possible aspects of them replace them with the best things we can imagine (250).

Mushrooms are part of a cleansing process called mycoremediation and work as great biological filters. They “can remediate soil and sediment contaminated by heavy oils petroleum products, pesticides, alkaloids, polychlorinated biphenyls, and even E. coli” (251). In areas that they were introduced, they were revitalized the soil and brought flowers and wildlife back.

If we can fully adopt this practice in the run down areas of our cities we can revive them and make them better than they ever have been. I agree with the article that it is very important to learn from our past and not completely cover-up our mistakes. Duisburg, Germany is a perfect example of keeping history visible despite its harsher aesthetics. You can still see the decayed factories and tanks while walking though the park on winding paths. I believe that this is an easy practice to be implemented into all of our cities and that it should be done so as soon as possible.