Enviormentalist nightmare? Chemist Dream Land? The Superfund Sites

Anyway, there are over a thousand of these sites across the US, check the above link and you can search through them, and the government is trying to clean some of them up. Many of them are chemical wastelands, home to strange formations and lakes of acid. One article though specifically caught my attention, found here describing the surreal conditions of a superfund site called "Tar Creek"

Now, call me odd but I want to go there. And after reading up on some of these other sites, some of them rated considerably worse, I'm ready to pack up for a road trip! I mean, who wouldn't want to go to a place where rivers of acid flow and the ground catches on fire from friction, where the acrid sting of sulfurous vapors pierces your sense of smell and bottomless pits of unknown composition abound.

Sound's like a blast to me. Could you imagine having a science madness get together at one of these places? What are some other peoples thought's on these environmental catastrophes?

[Edited on 2/9/2004 by BromicAcid]

How about we all organise a trip to Tschernobyl? That will be fun! Radiation-induced chemical reactions, witnessed on one's own bodies!

Besides, old mines are great places to get great minerals!

[Edited on 10-2-2004 by chemoleo]

It's interesting how practically everything east of the mississippi is plastered in them. Just look at the map. California has it's share as well. I come to find out there is actually a superfund site about a 5 minute drive away. It's only a land fill though. Nothing too fun.

I wish the rivers flowed of acid here. How convienent it would be to just walk down to the local pond with a respirator and a 55 gallon pail to resupply myself with sulfuric acid, or better yet nitric.

After looking closely at the map I've found that there are quite a few superfund sites in my area with a hazard rating of over 50, this summer I plan to visit one, should make for a fun at home qualitative analysis lab. Just pick up some dirt and take some pictures, now that sounds like fun.

On the volcanism subject, before that movie Dante's Peak came out I saw a special on a volcano that had a lake, a huge lake that had fuming, viscous sulfuric acid filling it! Like 99% + oleum kind! I bet the best you could get from a hazardous waste site would be some spent acid. But even that would be like a natural resource to chemists.

It seems like those places were made for chemists though. I know I wouldn't live long if I lived adjacent to a big one because I would constantly go, "Ahh.. the hazards of lead are overrated." Then later in the day, "I'm pretty sure that puddle I fell in was just dilute sulfuric acid, I didn't smell any dioxin, no big deal."

Two years later on my death bed, "It's all those irradiated apples I ate... I know it, chemicals would never betray me...." Looking out the window at the miasma of colors reflected off the lake of acid I would reach out shakingly uttering my last words... "my precious superfund site, who will protect you when I'm gone...."

burning river

That's a very responsible and adult point of view and you should be proud of yourself.

However, I too, understand, and have felt the allure of these places. Abandoned factories and industrial sites just seem to hold some strange fascination.

I am reminded of a documentary I saw on the scientists studying Chernobyl. The guys who were actually mapping the inside of the factory. I think it was on 60 Minutes or 20/20 about ten years ago.

Anyway it showed these guys who decided just how much rad exposure they would tolerate when they first started the study.

Then they started passing their self-imposed levels so they'd set new ones. and so on and so on......until finally they just one day decided, en masse, to take off their rad counting badges.

Most of them eventually died, but it was strange and yet understandable how they just couldn't tear themselves away from the project. They just kept going back in to the belly of the beast and taking pictures and readings and whatnot.

There were these rivers of radiation that would give you a fatal dose in only a few hours if you were to stay in them, that they would have to jump through. Some very far from the actual core.

And I remember there was this null area, an almost radiation free room that was less than twenty inches(of unarmored concrete) from the melted core. All except for a single super hot corner of the room.

Those intrepid scientists are really responsible for a lot of knowledge. We now know that radiation at the macro scale often doesn't act at all like the micro scale models predict.

Most of those men are probably dead now. But ever since I saw those flickering images on my T.V. screen I have fervently wished I could visit the scene, Travel through those same corridors. Those images I saw on that night are burned into my memory forever.

Crazy.....maybe. But it calls to me.

I think I have a little bit of an understanding as to why the first scientists felt compelled to reach out and touch the burning branch from the lightning struck tree.

While the rest of the tribe used their commonsense and fled.

I wonder at the courage it must have taken to try to pick it up a second time, after it already had singed his fingers.

a new Superfund site (Hg)

none

Huh?
Mercury, in nature, mainly exists as mercury sulphide, HgS. This is insoluble, and not as toxic. There was no need to evolve organisms that have to tolerate mercury - although one can't be sure, as you say.
An organism that is resistant to mercury would either have to convert existing mercury salts to a relatively non-toxic form (such as HgS), or it would rely on its protein/enzymes to be devoid of cysteines, or methionines - both sulphur containing amino acids. I'd doubt that an organism could do without those two amino acids, as a lot of metal-chelating proteins/enzymes rely on the complexing abilities of histidine, cysteine and methionine.
Hence - a 'mercury eating' bacterium would at most convert it into some insoluble, relatively non-toxic form such as HgS.
Altogether Pyrovus I think you are correct - in that it is not inconceivable that there are bacteria that have evolved to live and to proliferate in a mercury -salt rich environment. I think it's unlikely though - as mercury affects so many processes at once (= proteins) the organism is killed, with no survivors (this being the end to evolution). Conversely, antibiotics affect mostly only one or two processes within cells, so if several trillion cells are present, it is possible that a few will survive that happen to have both resistances.... which are just the cells (bacteria) we will have to fight lateron with additional antibiotics.
Thus it is often advised to use several antibiotics at once, to avoid selecting specifically for resistant ones.
Sorry for the rant ... let's go back on topic