2 | GMO SCIENCE https://gmoscience.org A public platform where genetically engineered (GE) crop and food impacts are openly discussed and thoughtfully analyzed. Thu, 09 Nov 2023 22:02:10 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.1 https://gmoscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/cropped-fav-icon-32x32.png 2 | GMO SCIENCE https://gmoscience.org 32 32 Turning Sewage Sludge and Food Waste into Carbon Free Vehicle Fuels https://gmoscience.org/2022/06/26/turning-sewage-sludge-and-food-waste-into-carbon-free-vehicle-fuels/ Sun, 26 Jun 2022 20:06:07 +0000 https://www.rhi.bio/?p=677516

Highlights

  • Sewage dumped into the ocean harms sea life
  • Sewage sludge converted to fertilizer has too many harmful chemicals in it
  • Food waste and sewage sludge can be turned into valuable fuel, but toxic chemicals (e.g., glyphosate, prescription drugs) are still problematic
  • Acid-loving microbes from Yellowstone Park produce versatile enzymes capable of breaking down toxic chemicals
  • Hydrogen gas can be extracted during processing and combined with nitrogen from the air to produce ammonia, a convenient storage form of hydrogen gas
  • Electric vehicles fueled by hydrogen gas are fast becoming a practical reality

Brett Danson is an entrepreneur who lives in Kauai, Hawaii, and his life passion has become seeking ways to improve the environment in order to safeguard human health and the health of the ecosystem. His fascinating life story reveals how adversity can lead to a new focus of life energy, ultimately resulting in both personal and financial success, and even great achievement.

Brett’s life-changing moment took place on a day in 2010 when he was innocently walking his dog along a street on the west side of Kauai, when a pick-up truck drove by with men in the back, dressed in hazmat suits spraying weed killer along a 2-mile long seawall. Even though Brett and his dog were across the street, the foul smell of the herbicide permeated. The sprayers were paying no attention to the man with his dog. While Brett was watching them, the dog soon passed out, and Brett tripped over the dog just as it collapsed to the ground. Shortly thereafter, both Brett and his dog became sick. Through some investigations, Brett found out that the chemical was a mixture of glyphosate and 2,4-D, which had been incorrectly formulated at double the specified concentration in the instruction manual.

That was bad. But there was more — a much darker secret. Nearly all the homes on the west side of Kauai have cesspools. Cesspools are simply open holes in the ground where sewage from the home or businesses collects. Cesspools leak into the ocean throughout Hawaii and many other parts of the world. It’s a worldwide problem causing millions of deaths and illnesses every year. Sewage is a problem and food waste is a problem, worldwide. Sewage and food waste unchecked create unsanitary conditions that damage the entire ecosystem.

Brett’s condition continued to deteriorate, and he was eventually diagnosed with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD). His doctor gave him a very discouraging prognosis, recommending that he “get his life in order” and prepare to die.

Instead, Brett got on the Web and started researching any information he could find on how to heal from COPD. He eventually settled on several natural supplements that he took in high doses, including essential oils such as red thyme, quercetin and N-acetyl cysteine. It took several years, but finally he was able to fully heal.

Brett’s experience had a lasting effect on his perspective on life. He decided to set up a nonprofit foundation which he called the “Global Environmental Legacy Foundation,” whose main focus initially was to try to figure out how to use advanced sciences to remove pathogens and chemicals like glyphosate from water supplies. In 2015, the foundation created a short video [1] describing an idea involving magnetic nanoparticles using a method called capacitive deionization.

Brett is a natural-born leader, and he is not shy about reaching out to experts to share his novel ideas and to expand his knowledge domain. One by one, he slowly grew a network of like-minded individuals, all broadly interested in the topic of turning waste into useful products, while detoxifying water. He also became mindful of the fact that human waste and food waste, if not properly managed, not only causes severe illness and death but can contribute to the carbon footprint that is affecting climate change, through the release of greenhouse gases such as methane, carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides.

Unfortunately, today, because of the chemical age that we live in, both sewage and food waste are contaminated with many toxic chemicals, such as glyphosate and polychlorinated bisphenols (the forever chemicals), but also toxic metals and many unmetabolized prescription drugs present in human waste. Handling waste is a much more difficult and challenging problem than it was back in the day before all these synthetic chemicals had been invented.

For example, many of the drugs used in chemotherapy to treat cancer are not metabolized by the patient and can end up in the waterways. A good example is methotrexate, which is used to treat not only cancer and leukemia, but also psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory diseases [2]. A great number of these cytostatic drugs are not significantly removed by standard processing methods, suggesting their high persistence in wastewater treatment plants [3, 4]. Metformin is another drug that is widely prescribed to treat type II diabetes. It is thought to be the most highly deposited pharmaceutical in the aquatic environment by mass [5]. It is also a known endocrine disruptor, and it is likely one of the factors causing the appearance of “intersex” fish in waterways that receive abundant sewage effluent. These fish are genetically male with testes, but they also produce eggs and have other features of female gonads.

And, of course, glyphosate is another very common chemical present in sewage sludge and food waste. A study has shown that, when glyphosate is added to water that has abundant biofilms present, the glyphosate quickly adheres to the biofilms and becomes concentrated there at levels two to four orders of magnitude higher than the levels found in the surrounding water [6]. Juvenile fish and amphibians dwell in the biofilms, and the bioconcentration of glyphosate there does not bode well for them. Glyphosate is increasingly being recognized as an endocrine disruptor, so it too could be contributing to the plight of the gender-confused fish [7].

It is interesting to reflect on the long history of managing human waste. Long ago, as people began to crowd into metropolitan areas, it became apparent that something needed to be done, and this led to the invention of indoor plumbing linking to a network of pipes to deliver effluent from a large number of homes into a catchment basin, where it could be treated by reactive agents like chlorine and ozone to kill pathogens before releasing the waste into waterways. But, as always, things are more complicated than they seem. It turns out, for example, that ozone and chlorine treatment can combine to cause certain stimulants such as ephedrine and methamphetamine, as well as certain antidepressants, to metabolize to dangerous carcinogenic products such as chloropricin [8]. Chloropricin is actually used as a broad-spectrum antimicrobial, fungicide, herbicide, insecticide, and nematicide. On the other hand, both chlorine and ozone are somewhat effective at breaking down glyphosate, and this has probably led to a much lower glyphosate contamination level in the wastewater.

Over time, strange marine die-offs made people aware that sewage runoff was becoming a problem affecting the health of marine life. This caused scientists to focus on developing ways to repurpose the sewage sludge as “biosolids” for land-based use [9]. It seems reasonable to think of converting biological waste into fertilizer, and this could be a good idea if not for all the toxic synthetic chemicals it contains today. Dr. David Lewis is an internationally renowned microbiologist who formerly worked as a senior research microbiologist with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Office of Research and Development. He is known as a whistle-blower who found that agricultural use of processed sewage sludge promoted by EPA programs was linked to illness and death. He recently published a long and fascinating article summarizing his findings over the past several decades [10]. He even argues that widespread land application of sewage sludge (biosolids) may be an overlooked factor in the autism epidemic.

Returning to Brett Danson’s story, it turns out that his idea with the magnetic nanoparticles did not reach a practical solution, because the particles were too expensive, and the chemicals they removed from the water were not getting broken down. But he was not discouraged by this. In collaboration with his network of experts, he eventually worked out an elegant solution that could turn food waste, sewage sludge and agricultural waste into ammonia, which would then serve as a storage form of “green” hydrogen fuel. His small non-profit has now morphed into a bigger commercial operation with several employees, and he has an ambitious plan of assembling a complete ecosystem involving a multi-step process to convert waste into fuel while minimizing the release of greenhouse gases. His company is called GELF Sciences [11], and it promotes the concept of the “AINA Zero-Discharge Wastewater Treatment System.”

Eventually, Brett joined forces with John Sabo of Arizona State University, and the two decided to become business partners. Brett and John successfully transferred a technology invented by Dr. Bruce Rittmann and Dr. Cesar Torress. Brett and John opened GELF Energy Corp. The patented technology, licensed exclusively to GELF Energy Corporation, converts organic waste into electricity 10 times faster than any other technology. The basic idea in simplistic terms was to take advantage of electrogenic microorganisms, capture the electrons in the cathode, and then use the electrons to generate large volumes of gas that can be turned into electricity. Then, the electricity is combined with air and water to make ammonia. It requires a carefully choreographed sequence of processing steps with feedback loops involving the use of microorganisms in a first step followed by high temperatures and pressures to further break down the organic matter, including the toxic chemicals. Simplistically speaking, a so-called microbial energy device ™ takes advantage of microbes that produce electrons while degrading organic matter. The electrons are then shuttled to a cathode, where they are combined with protons to form gas, which is captured. The process also makes fertilizers. Most of the ammonia is generated via an ammonia electrolyzer, which simply combines water, electricity and air to make the ammonia. Some of the ammonia is used in fertilizers. There are also by-products that can be used as fuel to heat the biomass.

One of the big breakthroughs came when Brett’s team from New Mexico State University became aware of algae that grow in the hot springs of Yellowstone Park under extremely acidic conditions. These algae love acid so much that they immediately die in an environment that is too basic. This eliminates any worries of them escaping from the production plant. And the acidic environment they live in is very effective for assisting in the breakdown of toxic chemicals, supported by their remarkable repertoire of versatile enzymes.

Ammonia turns out to be an excellent “storage form” of hydrogen gas. Hydrogen gas is becoming increasingly viable as a fuel source for fuel cell vehicles – hydrogen gas is easily converted to electricity to fuel electric cars, and it is a very clean energy source. But hydrogen bulk storage presents an expensive challenge [12]. Since it is a gas, we must rely on high-pressure compressed gas cylinders made out of steel or composites to maintain pressure up to 1050 bar to condense the gas for storage. An attractive alternative is to take advantage of nitrogen to make liquid ammonia (NH3), where the hydrogen atoms, securely bound to nitrogen, are naturally much more crowded. It’s a fairly straightforward step to extract the hydrogen from the ammonia after distribution.

We are a long way from a practical solution for all the problems associated with hydrogen gas as a fuel source for vehicles. In the formative stages of industry development, the public sector will need to support the common infrastructure required to produce, store, and distribute hydrogen. Luckily for Brett, Hawaii is playing a leadership role in the development of solutions using hydrogen gas as a fuel, in part because gasoline is considerably more expensive in Hawaii than on the mainland. In a recent ceremony honoring a launch of Hawaii’s first “hydrogen station,” governor David Ige boasted that Hawaii “is the only state in the country committed to a 100% clean, renewable energy future.” [13] Despite the fact that much more research is still needed, it is reassuring to know that many brilliant minds are working hard to solve both our energy needs and our needs to reduce toxic chemical exposures in an enterprise that involves a joining of forces between the renewable fuels industry and the wastewater treatment industry.

References
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jdVXejSpXg Glyphosate Removal in Water. September 11, 2015.
[2] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210119085240.htm University of British Columbia Okanagan campus. New tool removes chemotherapy drugs from water systems. ScienceDaily 19 January 2021.
[3] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/es0609405 IJ Buerge, HR Buser, T Poiger, MD Mu ̈ller. Occurrence and fate of the cytostatic drugs cyclophosphamide and ifosfamide in wastewater and surface waters. Environ Sci Technol 2006; 40(23): 7242-7250.
[4] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001429991930768X#bib10 M Jureczkoab, J Kalkaa. Cytostatic pharmaceuticals as water contaminants. European Journal of Pharmacology Volume 866, 5 January 2020, 172816
[5] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25898388/ NJ Niemuth, RD Klaper. Emerging wastewater contaminant metformin causes intersex and reduced fecundity in fish. Chemosphere 2015; 135: 38-45.
[6] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33310222/ Laura Beecraft, Rebecca Rooney. Bioconcentration of glyphosate in wetland biofilms. Science of the Total Environment 2021; 756: 143993.
[7] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33131751/ Juan P. Mun ̃oz, Tammy C. Bleak, Gloria M. Calaf. Glyphosate and the key characteristics of an endocrine disruptor: A review. Chemosphere 2021; 270: 128619.
[8] https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/presspacs/2020/acs-presspac-february-5-2020/treating-wastewater-with-ozone-could-convert-pharmaceuticals-into-toxic-compounds.html ACS News Service Weekly PressPac: February 05, 2020 Treating wastewater with ozone could convert pharmaceuticals into toxic compounds.
[9] https://extension.psu.edu/what-is-sewage-sludge-and-what-can-be-done-with-it R Stehouwer. What is sewage sludge and what can be done with it? September 15, 2010.
[10] DL Lewis. The autism biosolids conundrum. International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research July 15, 2020; 1(1): 51-74. https://ijvtpr.com/index.php/IJVTPR/article/view/4
[11] https://gelfsciences.com/ GELF Sciences, Inc.
[12] https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0360319919310195 J Andersson, S Grönkvist. Large-scale storage of hydrogen. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy 2019; 44: 11901e11919.
[13] https://www.forbes.com/sites/dougnewcomb/2018/07/21/hydrogen-fuel-for-passenger-cars-comes-to-hawaii/?sh=3b4e5ac81546 D NewcombFormer. Hydrogen Fuel for Passenger Cars Comes To Hawaii. Jul 21, 2018.

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Guest PDF: US Oversight Committee on Gene Editing Disbanded https://gmoscience.org/2020/09/10/us-oversight-committee-on-gene-editing-disbanded/ Thu, 10 Sep 2020 23:20:23 +0000 https://gmoscience.org/?p=1615
Note from GMOScience: The following has been submitted by Third World Network (https://twn.my) US rDNA Committee Disbanded, Exacerbating Poor Oversight of GE Research Few outside the world of science policy noticed late last year when the US Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, in operation since 1975, formally ceased to exist. It was a surprising fate for a group that, some argue, was the single most influential in the global (non-)regulation of genetic engineering research risks. What does this mean for biosafety in the US and elsewhere? The crumbling of the US’ national genetic engineering safety net, which was never very robust to begin with, leaves yawning gaps in US biotechnology oversight, even as a raft of new and potentially dangerous technologies, such as gene editing and synthesis, become broadly accessible, and even as the US still holds itself out as some sort of biotechnology regulation model for the world. The TWN Biosafety Briefing, ‘The quiet death of the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC)’, suggests steps for rectifying the numerous problems. These recommendations are also relevant and have potential applicability elsewhere, both nationally and internationally. The Briefing is available here: https://wp.twnnews.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Biosafety-Briefing_RAC.pdf.
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Super Weeds and Herbicide – Tolerant Genetically Engineered Crops https://gmoscience.org/2015/12/23/super-weeds-and-herbicide-tolerant-genetically-engineered-crops/ Wed, 23 Dec 2015 19:39:37 +0000 https://gmoscience.org//?p=779 By Belinda Martineau, PhD

Some Ag-Biotech history

Twenty years ago, before crops genetically engineered to be herbicide-tolerant were commercially available, one of the big concerns environmentalists had about the use of agricultural biotechnology was that it would lead to “super weeds.” Their apprehension stemmed from biotech products in the industrial pipeline at the time, such as Monsanto’s Roundup Ready® crops, that were impervious to various herbicides like glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup®. They pointed out that these herbicide-tolerant crops would encourage over-use of herbicides, which could effectively “select,” from among the weeds being doused with the herbicide, the weeds that could survive; farmers would no longer be able to control those surviving weeds with that particular herbicide and… voilà!… super weeds. (Some crops, such as canola, also are related enough to various weeds that herbicide-tolerant versions of them could produce super weeds simply by breeding with their weedy relatives.)

But other scientists claimed, then and later, that the evolution of glyphosate-tolerant weeds was only a “negligible possibility,” and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Agriculture (USDA) allowed commercialization of genetically engineered (GE) Roundup Ready® soybeans, corn, cotton, sugar beets, and alfalfa, as well as canola, anyway.
It took only just over half a decade after Roundup Ready® soybeans were commercialized for a super weed to show up in a Delaware soybean field. And now, when approximately 94% of the soybeans and 89% of the corn and cotton grown in the US are herbicide-tolerant, super weeds have infested millions of acres in at least 22 US states. And “super” versions of, for example, pigweed, horseweed, and giant ragweed that are glyphosate-tolerant are posing problems not only in the US but in agricultural areas of Brazil, Australia, and China as well.

A glimpse at the Ag-Biotech present

This is a serious situation. It means that many farmers, thus far primarily in the midwestern, southern, and eastern US, and to a lesser extent in California and Oregon as well, must spray their fields with more toxic herbicides in their efforts to eliminate weeds. It also limits the use of no-till and low-till farming methods, which reduce erosion and runoff of pesticides and fertilizers into rivers – methods that were originally touted by proponents of herbicide-tolerant crops as a major reason to embrace these GE organisms.
Even Monsanto has now admitted that the development of glyphosate-resistant super weeds is “a serious issue,” although a manager for the company went on to tell The New York Times that he believed this serious issue to be, nevertheless, “manageable.”

History repeats itself

Apparently, however, the primary way that Monsanto and other biotech companies plan to “manage” the super weed “issue” is by developing and commercializing GE crops that are tolerant of additional herbicides, the idea being that such next-generation herbicide-tolerant crops could then be doused with glufosinate or dicamba or 2,4-D (a component of the defoliant Agent Orange used during the Vietnam War), chemicals that should kill the super weeds that Roundup®/glyphosate no longer can.
Environmental scientists have the same qualms now about these next-generation herbicide-tolerant crops as they did about the first GE herbicide-tolerant crops 20 years ago… only now the debate isn’t so hypothetical.  We now know, based on the rapid development of glyphosate-tolerant super weeds, that genetically engineering crops to be tolerant of additional herbicides will inevitably lead to more super weeds.
Creating next-generation herbicide-tolerant crops amounts to repeating the same mistake as was made with Roundup Ready® crops in the first place… only this time around the herbicides that will be sprayed with abandon may be more harmful than the developers of Roundup® claimed glyphosate was. Of course, now that the World Health Organization has declared glyphosate a “probable carcinogen,” that herbicide doesn’t seem nearly as “innocuous” as its proponents have often claimed it to be over the last twenty-five years.
Why make the same mistake twice (or three or more times, as Monsanto, Syngenta, and Dow Chemical are all developing next-generation GE herbicide-tolerant crops)? We have already learned that GE herbicide-tolerant crops are not the way to sustainably manage weeds. A more sustainable solution would be to use an integrated pest management (IPM) system and agroecological methods instead.
[For more information on especially Dow Chemical’s 2,4-D-resistant crops, please see “Going Backwards: Dow’s 2,4-D-Resistant Crops and a More Toxic Future,” a publication of the Center for Food Safety.]
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