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Re:Mushrooms Can Eat Plastic, Petroleum and CO2 (2018) by baybal2 on Thursday December 03, 2020 @05:07AM (#25287445)
> The unanswered question is what will you do with the mushrooms after they've munched on petroleum or plastic? My guess is that you're not going to want them on your pizza cause they might just be toxic.

Believe me or not, I ate that yeast grown on petroleum paraffin once.

At the time of extreme food scarcity in Russia, we had people eating animal feed produced from yeast grown on paraffin. It's called paprin in Russian.

So, knowing that most of petroleum hydrocarbons are toxic if ingested, the result may be more amendable than the source product.

Re:Mushrooms Can Eat Plastic, Petroleum and CO2 (2018) by hated on Thursday December 03, 2020 @10:20AM (#25289639)
Heh.

The product disrupted hormonal and water balance, causing edema to form throughout the body of the animals, reported by the Russian business consultancy, which brought studies from Bashkiria State University.

“Meat obtained from animals fed with Paprin contained an accumulation of abnormal amino acids that were incorporated into the membranes of nerve cells, thus disrupting the process of conducting a normal nerve impulse,” said Raisa Bashirova, principal investigator at Bashkiria State University, who added that it was even harmful to humans to paintings with Paprin:

“Factory staff and local citizens were presenting diseases such as canker sores and bronchial asthma. “ In the 1990s, almost the entire production of bioprotein in Russia was stopped. Gaprin, although it had proved to be safe and efficient, could not compete with rather cheap imported protein feedstuffs, which began to land on the local market in large quantities. Now, several decades later, bioprotein production in Russia seems to be getting a second chance.

From: http://benisonmedia.com/bioprotein-may-bring-self-sufficienc...

Re:Mushrooms Can Eat Plastic, Petroleum and CO2 (2018) by eru on Thursday December 03, 2020 @06:58AM (#25288021)
As an even simpler example, hydrocarbons can be burned to water and C2O. You can feed those to plants just like anything else.

(But going that route would waste a lot of energy.)

Re:Mushrooms Can Eat Plastic, Petroleum and CO2 (2018) by firethief on Thursday December 03, 2020 @07:36PM (#25297528)
That would never make sense to do. The atmosphere is heavily enriched with CO2 already, so plants don't need help obtaining it. If you want to grow plants in an area where water is so scarce you have to import it, but you have oil, don't burn your money: sell the oil and buy water.
Re:Mushrooms Can Eat Plastic, Petroleum and CO2 (2018) by eru on Friday December 04, 2020 @04:32AM (#25300554)
Uh, yes? You'd be a fool to burn oil just as a source as CO2 and water.

I didn't say that's what you should do or that it makes sense.

Merely as an illustration that you can start with some toxic substances and feed them to plants, and be very happy eating those plants.

Of course, that doesn't apply to everything. Heavy metals stay bad for you.