Pine needles are both a cheap and accurate way to test for pollutants. | Unsplash/Roma Kaiuk
Pine needles are both a cheap and accurate way to test for pollutants. | Unsplash/Roma Kaiuk
North Carolina State University researchers are testing the soil, air and water in Cumberland County after discovering that the Chemours facility was releasing toxic chemicals into the environment.
According to CBS 17 News, the facility was releasing PFAS, otherwise known as "forever chemicals."
In other parts of the world, plants and other flora are tested for pollutants, which is why the scientists had the idea to test pine needles to check for PFAS pollutants.
“We said, well, North Carolina has all these pine trees and we have all these new PFAS in our state that they weren’t looking at, so we tried to see if we could use that same idea and just expand it to cover all these new PFAS we’re seeing in North Carolina," NC State researcher Kaylie Kirkwood told CBS 17 News.
Pine needles are both a cheap and accurate way to test for pollutants.
"A lot of people that do this atmospheric testing have to buy expensive equipment, put it out for a specific amount of time, where we can actually just go out pick pine needles that we’re interested in and pull those off," fellow NC State researcher Erin Baker told CBS 17 News. "The other thing, with other equipment, is they might miss big contamination events. Because you might have an event, then have to run your equipment out there really quickly to sample, where our trees are always there."
The main reason pine needles make the perfect material for testing is because they are sticky, and the pollutants adhere to them long enough to show up in the testing.
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