Here is an amazing and interesting fact; did you know that certain mushroom mycelium can eat oil? Yes that is what I said, mycelium can eat oil and therefore help clean up an oil spill.

A variety of Oyster mushrooms have proven to be extremely efficient at consuming oil and turning it into a non-toxic compost in less than 3 months.

Here is a video describing the process that was successfully used in 2007 during the oil spill in San Fransisco.

Clearly this is a viable solution and we should be jumping at the chance to use it with the most recent spill. I would hope that all the top scientists and companies related to this disaster would be investigating this concept to the fullest extent. Sadly we are not hearing any recent news or anything updated on this topic.

How does this work? Hair naturally absorbs oil from air and water and acts as the perfect sponge for an oil slick. Once the mats are soaked with oil you can inject oyster mushroom mycelium or simply place it on the mats to absorb and grow off the oil. The mushrooms will take approximately 12 weeks to absorb all of the oil, converting the oily hair mats into nontoxic compost. A national mushroom expert and hero mycologist named Paul Stamets donated $10,000 worth of oyster mushrooms to the clean-up effort when he heard of the project.

This past event has inspired Spores101 to try and get involved and we are currently investigating ways we can help by using this technology given to us by nature. You can learn more and give your input / ideas at the Shroomtalk Mycology Forums. Specifically this post has been started and contains more valuable information about the subject, if you are interested please consider joining Shroomtalk and contribute what you can.

Here is the link to the main Oil Spill and Mushrooms thread on Shroomtalk.