Science is cool

An Australian scientist today claimed that his team has isolated a strain of bacteria that can eat toxic waste and render it harmless to humans.

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Microbes with a taste for toxic waste may hold the solution to cleaning up contaminated industrial sites and poisoned waterways across the globe, saving billions of dollars in cleanup bills, an Australian scientist said.

Microbes found in old waste sites in Australia not only tolerate lethal soil and water cocktails created by waste petroleum and chlorine, but can break them down so they no longer threaten humans, the scientist said on Friday.

"We have isolated bacteria which can live on those waste compounds," Megha Mallavarapu, from a government-backed environmental research center based in South Australia state, told Reuters.

Stories like this make me think that there is hope for us yet.