Ilya Raskin is a plant biologist at Rutgers University . In 1986 after the Chernobly disaster, he devloped a method of growing sunflowers on styrofoam rafts on contaminated ponds. The sunflowers roots grew into the deadly water and absorbed cesium and strontium. The sunflowers are good at collecting metals. They are then harvested and burned. The contaminated ash is then stored. Raskin has since used this same technique at other sites.  |
Leon V. Kochian is an expert on plant responses to environmental stress, plant nutrition and the use of plants to clean up soils. He works at the US Plant, Soil and Nutrition Laboratory at Ithaca, New York. His technology uses plants to vaccuum heavy metals from the soil. He has found that the plant Thlaspi caerulescens thrives on soil with high levels of zinc and cadmium. He is currently working on plants that can eliminate aluminum toxicity in soils.  |
Norman Terry is a professor of plant biology at UC Berkeley. He has developed a genetically engineered variety of Indian Mustard with an increased capacity to remove selenium, cadmium and other toxic trace elements. This variety works very well because it is fast growing, tolerates toxic soils and can be grown several times in one growing season.  |
