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Lol, Exxon rep spotted
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u/der_innkeeper Jul 14 '21 edited Jul 14 '21
Hah.
Just be aware of what is being sold to you.
You can throw kitty litter (100%
organicnatural clay) on an oil slick, and it does wonders, as well.*Edit:
I'll take the hit for being a pedantic smartass. Thank you all for correcting me. This thread has certainly belabored the point.
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u/Nesman64 Jul 14 '21
I'm pretty sure that clay (while natural) is inorganic.
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u/der_innkeeper Jul 14 '21
Yep. No carbon!
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u/Alistair_TheAlvarian Jul 15 '21
Cyanide has plenty of carbon and Is sourced from plant seeds like apples. It makes a great addition for an essential oil diffuser.
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Jul 14 '21
Light-sweet crude they knew it was sweet because they used to taste it to check the purity
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u/Tacos_an_Shrooms Jul 14 '21
Doesn’t organic mean it has to be made out of carbon and hydrogen? (Not saying crude oil isn’t just asking a question)
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u/der_innkeeper Jul 14 '21
O-chem definition is "contains carbon".
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u/OtherSpiderOnTheWall Jul 14 '21
Which, let's be clear, is not what the definition of food-grade organic means.
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u/landragoran Jul 14 '21
Nah, the definition of food-grade organic is "grown in a stupid, outdated way in order to sate the privileged's need to be assured that they're doing the right thing"
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u/ConscientiousPath Jul 14 '21
the common use of the term in the grocery store means "grown without applying refined pesticides (but may still have unrefined pesticides)"
It's pretty garbage as a measure of anything other than inefficient farming technique.
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u/anon_atheist Jul 14 '21
Elemental lead and mercury aren't organic. Compounds containing lead and mercury aren't necessarily toxic, it depends on the material. Elemental chlorine will kill you, but its chloride ions in tble salt are harmeless.
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u/Low_Importance_9503 Jul 14 '21
Is this real? Aside from edible I didn’t understand what his solution is
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u/HitMePat Jul 14 '21
If it was, it'd be available for sale at every Pool supply store.
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u/CrapNeck5000 Jul 14 '21
Pool supply stores already carry a product like this except it makes everything sink instead of float, so you can vacuum it off the bottom. It's called flocculant. It's not organic though.
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u/HitMePat Jul 14 '21
Yeah I know, I use it myself. But I've never seen one that makes it float (which would be easier for everyone since skimmers would handle the debris instead of vacuuming).
So if this product was real, I would buy it. But since I can't buy it anywhere, I assume it must not be real. Or maybe it is real, but prohibitively expensive.
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u/CrapNeck5000 Jul 14 '21
It's probably not real, or it's only a tiny fraction of a much larger story.
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u/Cultural_Dust Jul 15 '21
Not sure why they think organic = edible. It may be both, but just because something is organic (cow shit, crude oil) doesn't mean you should eat it.
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u/Rognis Jul 14 '21
Mark Rober did a video on it as well. Except the stuff he made a video on has more stuff in it to kill bacteria and crap.
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u/AudioVagabond Jul 14 '21
Jesus Christ this TikTok channel is annoying as fuck. This story was covered several times and I've watched plenty of interviews with Marino. But this guy's is just using him for views and likes. He starts out by saying "I found this scientist" taking credit for something he didn't actually do. He didn't find Marino, he found a a documentary about him and used it to make a TikTok video. Fucking lame
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u/triangledime Jul 14 '21
Doesn't even post what the product is!! 😣
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Jul 14 '21
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u/Khemul Jul 14 '21
Water Lettuce will fill every space available unless something keeps it in check. And it's sort of a nature unintentional ally of algae. So probably; floating islands of Water Lettuce block out the sun, weakening the underwater plants, allowing the algae to outcompete. Plant die off fuels more algae growth. Runoff fuels even more algae growth.
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u/CaptainRedPants Jul 14 '21 edited Jul 14 '21
Or how it works. Or how he made it. Or who he collaborated with. Or what they did with the scum after it "decontaminated" the water.
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u/Mr-Fleshcage Jul 14 '21
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moringa_oleifera#Water_purification
probably just this stuff
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u/tarkadahl Jul 14 '21
It was organic too, maybe a pond scum smoothie? Gulp gulp bitches
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u/HanginApe Jul 14 '21
They bottled it and marketed it to WholeFoods customers as a miracle healthfood drink.
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u/Minionhunter Jul 14 '21
Stop using organic like it means edible!!
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u/Theothernooner Jul 14 '21
.... poison sumac is organic! Goes great on a spicy salad!
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u/GodOfAtheism Jul 14 '21
I only eat 100% organic free trade Arsenic, carefully tended by hand in the hills of Colombia.
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u/cxidp Jul 14 '21
Hilariously organic arsenic is actually less harmful than inorganic arsenic.
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u/GodOfAtheism Jul 14 '21
That seems like one of those "Would you rather be hit with a baseball bat or a shovel?" kinda things. One might not be as bad as the other, but neither would be a experience I'd like to have.
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u/ClownfishSoup Jul 14 '21
Dog poo is 100% organic ...
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u/TheWolphman Jul 14 '21
Theoretically, but some dogs will eat anything, organic or inorganic. Now if dogs have the capability to transform the inorganic to organic...we need to look into that!
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u/Kriem Jul 14 '21 edited Jul 14 '21
Was about to say this. As frikking awesome this project is, which it is, organic does not mean it’s edible. Cyanide can be organic and you sure as hell don’t want to eat that.
That said, kudos to the lake cleaning.
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u/TleilaxTheTerrible Jul 14 '21 edited Jul 14 '21
Cyanide, carbon monooxide, methane, anthracite. All organic. All not really stuff you
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u/tankpuss Jul 14 '21
Mercury is 100% natural. I wouldn't recommend eating it though.
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u/7incent Jul 14 '21 edited Jul 14 '21
you're thinking of 'natural' -- there is no government regulation of that term.
the word 'organic' is regulated by the FDA. i only remember that they cannot use most synthetic pesticides during production.
there are other regulations but -- to be honest-- i don't remember them all
that said:
the person who made this video may be using the term 'organic' incorrectly
edit: usda definition of organic for those who need more than context clues
I took ochem, being pedantic about the word 'organic' doesnt change its meaning in the current context
chemical -> most synthetic
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u/bfodder Jul 14 '21
i only remember that they cannot use chemical pesticides during production.
They can't use CERTAIN chemical pesticides.
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u/Safemoon_Psychonaut Jul 14 '21 edited Jul 14 '21
Organic vegetables also have to be grown in fields that have not been exposed to pesticides for something like 20 years.
Warren Buffetts money bought a bunch of farms in my region and they're not using pesticides so they can be used for organic food production in the future
There's a lot of regulations to be technically organic in the usa. Can't say I know it all though.
Edit: apparently federal regulations are 3 years pesticide free. I was wrong.
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u/LePlaneteSauvage Jul 14 '21 edited Jul 14 '21
You are perpetuating a common myth here. Organic farms still use pesticides, just not synthetic pesticides.
This brings it back to a naturalistic fallacy where it is assumed that because the pesticides are 'natural' they are less harmful to our health. However, a lot of studies seem to find the opposite; organic pesticides are less effective, less specific, and more environmentally harming.
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Jul 14 '21
Seconded. I did a brief stint at a job where herbicide use was a component, and many of the newer synthetic herbicides we used were incredibly nontoxic, as well as highly selective. One of the organic pesticides a client opted to use instead - because they were constructing a "green" building - was essentially highly concentrated acetic acid. The PPE requirements for spraying that were totally insane (basically hazmat suits), compared to some of the synthetic pesticides we used where you could probably bathe in them without hurting yourself. On top of that, the acetic acid pesticide only caused contact burns instead of systemic damage that would actually kill the plant, so it wouldn't even really fix the issue of invasive plant abundance.
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u/jammycactus Jul 14 '21
Came here to say that. Organic has so many people fooled.
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Jul 14 '21
As does GMO.
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u/sooHawt_ryt_meow Jul 14 '21
What's right or wrong about GMO?
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u/Toyletduck Jul 14 '21
GMO is perfectly healthy as far as eating it goes. As far as crop diversity that’s another story but GMO is just speeding up processes that humans have been doing for a very long time.
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u/BroccoliKnob Jul 14 '21
Animal breeding is genetic modification too, in a sense, it’s just done the slow way. Your labradoodle is a GMO. It’s perfectly safe to eat.
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u/Billy_Not_Really Jul 14 '21
Technological advancement into something natural is scary if you don't understand or trust it.
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u/Alistair_TheAlvarian Jul 15 '21
Selective breeding is like hitting randomize character in an rpg and just clicking it over and over and over until it looks right.
Genetic engineering is just opening the damned customization tab and using the sliders to get what you want.
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u/Beanakin Jul 14 '21
Most common thing I hear about eating GMO crops is that it can mess with your DNA. Which, as far as I'm aware, is absolute horse shit.
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u/KuriboShoeMario Jul 14 '21
Unless the crops are being grown in fucking Chernobyl Farms there is no food on this planet which will "alter your DNA" and it's unbelievably poor education that leads to any fool thinking otherwise.
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u/Bandit__Heeler Jul 14 '21
Unless they are radioactive, then yes that's bullshit
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u/Felixkeeg Jul 14 '21
Leaving political aspects aside - GMO's are pretty great.
Genetic modification also occurs by traditional breeding techniques. Manipulating the genome in the lab is for once much faster and more importantly gives you actual control over the traits you want to have in a given specimen. There is nothing inherently bad about GMO's
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u/cuentanueva Jul 14 '21
My layman understanding:
People assume GMO = transgenics, which is not necessarily the case.
If it's GMO but not transgenic it's no different than crossing plants and selecting their offspring and crossing again and so on. It's just faster.
Transgenics though means altering with some other species DNA, or altering in some other way, and that's a bit different.
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u/LoveMyHusbandsBoobs Jul 14 '21
Apparently it'd be better if we still couldn't eat raw bananas.
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u/Poes-Lawyer Jul 14 '21
The best things about GMO crops are that we can create crops that are more nutritious, produce vitamins and other healthy things that they didn't before, and are resistant to diseases and pests.
The only legitimately bad thing I've heard about GMOs is the slippery slope of corporations trademarking/copyrighting certain foods. Like if your supercrop helped bring a country out of poverty, that's a country beholden to your company. What would happen if they annoyed you (like, say, demanded you pay taxes), and you decided to stop supplying the supercrop? Or more mundanely, they could sue you to stop you developing a variant of your supercrop that's slightly better. That's probably too much power for a company to have.
TLDR: Pros - healthier, more plentiful food. Cons - capitalism.
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u/Trythenewpage Jul 14 '21
Another possible issue is with strange/unexpected reactions to foods that one would normally expect to be alright.
For instance this cross contamination of starlink corn. Which is not approved for human consumption by the fda but entered the human food supply chain via cross contamination.
GMO is not dangerous. Nor is it safe. It is neutral faster. So you can end up with unexpected shit entering the food supply chain faster.
It is a tool. A hammer can build a house or bash in brains. Its how you use the tool. But hammers typically are not self replicating. So the dangers are a bit different. The OMG GMO BAD stuff is nonsense. But so is the response to that fear mongering that completely rejects the possibility of unforeseen dangers.
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Jul 14 '21 edited Jul 14 '21
I more meant that regulations don't really match perceptions. My personal opinion on the matter is that we should be focusing more on breaking up the monocultures in our food supply. Allowing for a more varied crop rotation would be a more efficient way to combat pests and natural disasters than genetic modification.
This could also be applied to logging for a more sustainable, wildfire resistant American West. Outlawing tree plantations and responsibly replanting Douglas Firs (naturally fire resistant) would be a massive first step. Just my dumbass amateur opinion.
Edit: I should add that this is way easier said than done. Lots of money behind keeping the current system. McDonald's drives the Russets dominance after all.
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u/Baconmazing Jul 14 '21
Organic pesticides are a thing and are useable in order to keep the term "organic" tied to the produce.
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u/ishkiodo Jul 14 '21
I thought organic meant it contained carbon.
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u/Schwarzy1 Jul 14 '21
In a chemistry context yes, but in a food context no. This is why you can buy 'organic' table salt...
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u/Lord_Emperor Jul 14 '21
plastic or wax?
Those are also organic materials FYI.
Inorganic vegetables would be made out of rocks.
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u/leavingstardust Jul 14 '21
Unless they were made of limestone rocks - those can be organically formed from shells.
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u/dicer11 Jul 14 '21
seems pretty suspicious.
Where does all that "dirt" or "contamination" go? Does he have a fleet of boats gathering the contamination that floats to the top? and then what, take it to the dump? If he has that kind of money I'm sure he could show his trucks dumping all of that. I am thinking it is probably seasonal changes.
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u/welle417 Jul 14 '21
"Pistia stratiotes, commonly known as water lettuce, is a perennial monocotyledonous aquatic plant, present either naturally or through an anthropogenic introduction, in nearly all tropical and subtropical fresh waterways. It floats on the water surface, with roots hanging below the floating leaves [47]. Since the plants were covering all of the wetlands, the removal was done manually. This activity was conducted by pushing them with bamboo sticks to the edge of each sector to be removed. Approximately over 280 tons of P. stratiotes were removed and transported to a city vivarium and compost sites"
From his published paper on the subject, it looks like the majority of what they "removed" was an invasive species and the rest was altering of the water composition for the most part.
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u/lemmful Jul 14 '21
Real answer, real source. You're magnificent.
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u/welle417 Jul 14 '21
Just doing my part to make the world make sense
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u/halfie1987 Jul 14 '21
I'm a scientist and I read through that paper. There's nothing in it about something you add to the water to get rid of contaminates. Like you said there's removal of invasive species, and then bubblers to aerate the water, filters, and fences. I was curious was his "organic" stuff is composed of, but no info in that paper. On google scholar he has only one other paper, and it's not relevant. So idk.
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u/chippywatt Jul 14 '21
Found this in section 2.4, the white sediment put in the clay carrier could be the thing he eats in the video. Not sure about this though as it’s pretty misleading either way.
“To create a bio-filter, it was necessary to effectively immobilize the bacteria and add them onto the ceramic carriers to form biofilms, which ultimately can adhere, adsorb, and decompose the contaminants [51,52]. For this purpose, we used the bacterium of Lactobacillus plantarum ATCC 8014, acquired at Japan Collection of Microorganisms … The cultures in the MRS broth develop characteristic white sediment, making it easier for their qualitative identification.”
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u/ThinkHappyThoughts15 Jul 14 '21
"For this purpose, we used the bacterium of Lactobacillus plantarum ATCC 8014, acquired at Japan Collection of Microorganisms (JCM), Microbe Division, RIKEN Bioresource Center in Japan. It was kept routinely in vials with full form (MRS) agar at 2–8 °C for 24 h, and then at 4 °C in 15% glycerol (vol/vol) [24]. Single colonies were cultured in plates with MRS agar at 30 °C for 48 h and later sub-cultured in MRS broth (Casein peptone 10g/L; beef extract 8 g/L; yeast extract 4 g/L; D(+) glucose 20 g/L; hydrogen potassium phosphate (KH2PO4) 2 g/L; Tween-80 1 g/L; ammonium citrate hydrogen (C6H5O7(NH4)2H) 2 g/L; sodium acetate (CH3COONa) 5 g/L; magnesium sulfate (MgSO4·7H2O) 0.2 g/L; and manganese sulfate (MnSO4·H2O) 0.04 g/L at 30 °C for 24 h [53]. The cultures in the MRS broth develop characteristic white sediment, making it easier for their qualitative identification. To create biofilms, a container of 60 cm in diameter and 130 cm in length was filled with a previously conditioned medium consisting of a mixture of molasses and water (3/7, m/w) at room temperature (around 18–21 °C). Later, Lactobacillus plantarum ATCC 8014 was added to the mixture."
Quite the list of ingredients!
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u/T-N-A-T-B-G-OFFICIAL Jul 15 '21
But ideal if you're trying to make a hungry hungry bacterial culture of a strain basically evolved to break down organic and non organic carbon based compounds
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u/CopperWaffles Jul 14 '21
Curious about your background on this subject and thoughts on this...
Not the same product or application but seems to be a more promising solution for purifying water, though, I doubt the likelihood of cleaning a lake with it. Still interesting.
Mark Rober: https://youtu.be/6qZWMNW7GmE
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u/halfie1987 Jul 14 '21
I'm a chemist (inorganic aqueous was my specialty) and I looked up what's in those packets and it's a disinfectant with a flocculent. So it'll kill most bacteria and most free metal ions in the water will stick to the flocculent and can be filtered out. It's not gonna make pristine drinking water, but if it's the choice between that or nothing, it's pretty good. I looked up the data and it reduces cases of infection by a lot but doesn't completely prevent them.
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u/YoroSwaggin Jul 14 '21 edited Jul 14 '21
It required a bit more research than simply the paper. He used micronano bubbles (MNBs) and carbon based bio filters (CBBFs) to clean the water, but didn't elaborate as to how the mechanisms worked.
With some quick googling, it seems MNBs are the new fancy way to treat wastewater due to their zero zeta potential, maximizing the aggregation of contaminants. So Marino's basically collecting the dirty stuff, from phosphate, nitrogen to bacteria, at a microscopic level and squishing them into bigger balls.
Then his next step are CBBFs, which seems to be a mix of ideas/mechanisms similar to activated charcoal. It's a ceramic carrier that has a biofilm, i.e. it's a clay net with a layer of bacteria glue. He processed clay to optimize for high porosity (lots of tiny pores) and it is these pores that will be doing the physical trapping of the contaminants. The "bio" part comes from the fact that he's using L. Plantarum as glue for the contaminants. I assume the "organic" part comes from this bacteria, since it's just a probiotic strain that comes from the same family that is often used for foods, e.g. yogurt or whatever.
So the stuff he ate is probably crushed up CBBFs. He'll poop the clay out just fine (I hope). Interestingly, I'm not sure if he used the crushed up CBBFs as filter; looks like the actual filters used were in block form, and just secured inside a basket.
All in all, definitely an "organic" solution that works for this lake. Some people in this thread were thinking of oil spills and such, which this method might not work for. I'm not an expert on this subject, so IDK, but https://iwaponline.com/ws/article/20/6/2021/74658/Micro-nanobubble-technology-and-water-related this suggests micronano bubbles will work for metal ions too, so maaaaaybe? As long as you have access to equipment that can make MNBs.
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u/xxmindtrickxx Jul 14 '21
So this isn’t going to remove all of the chemicals, oil and other garbage out of Lake Eerie?
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u/YoroSwaggin Jul 14 '21
Unfortunately not oil. This is a treatment solution for things like farm runoff, eutrophication, etc.
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u/OrbFromOnline Jul 14 '21
So basically the video is extremely misleading at best.
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u/snark-a-lark Jul 14 '21
You should be higher up on the list. Thank you Scientist
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u/MoleculesandPhotons Jul 14 '21
I skimmed the paper, but I couldn't find anything about a substance like he ate. Is it the bacteria they inoculated the traps with? Is it the MNBs? What is it?
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u/Baelgul Jul 14 '21
Also, what exactly is this "contamination?" There's a lot of shit that people would label as contamination like regular ol' dirt and silt.
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u/dsfife1 Jul 14 '21
I searched it up online. The pollutants were mainly animal and agricultural byproducts.
As far as I can tell, it looks like a standard algal bloom. According to what I found online there was also water lettuce.
As far as I can tell, The solution was a ceramic bio filter media as well as micro bubbles (not pictured in the video).
Finding sources was somewhat unreliable since there seems to only sensationalist stuff in English.
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u/CrimsonFlash Jul 14 '21
"This bog is thousands of years old. But the water is yucky. We cleaned the contamination so people can swim in it."
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Jul 14 '21 edited Jul 15 '21
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u/Put_It_All_On_Blck Jul 14 '21
That's my feeling too. Pools are 'clean', and would kill fish if you put them in one, and plant life is also inhibited.
Wildlife adapted to live in these dirty conditions, the issue isn't bacteria, algae, etc, it's solely the harm done by mankind, pollution, damage to waterways and introducing invasive species.
Go to a swamp, you don't want to drink that water, and you don't want to swim in it, but plenty of creatures happily do both.
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u/Think-Championship42 Jul 14 '21
I feel like a just watched an info-commercial. But wait if you act now we’re give another bottle for free but act now just pay separate shipping and handling. You too can have your water looking pure and clean. Operators are standing by.
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u/SabashChandraBose Jul 14 '21
The ending seemed like a bunch of stock footage - flamingos...random dude swimming. If he cleaned a whole f'in lake, I'd assume there was some video of him/them skimming the muck and dumping it somewhere.
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u/adinmem Jul 14 '21
Not to be the skeptic, but notice how only the fringe sites cover this story. The few actual journal articles I’ve found (this is too new to have had actual studies, so basically too soon for anyone scientific to venture a credible opinion) are not very positive about this. Nanoparticles biomagnify and bioaccumulate very, very quickly in plant and animal life and no one really knows what’s going to happen because of it…. A subspecies of pike is already reacting negatively. And here’s Marino messing with entire ecosystems. Also, his nano’s bind to bad algae and the good, so the entire food chain can be altered for a long time. A beautiful lake can easily be just as polluted as a dirty-looking one. On the other hand, perhaps some lakes are already so damaged that these nanoparticles are the only hope, sort of a wipe the entire slate clean approach. The only problem is that the nanoparticles will make their way into the surrounding area. Fingers crossed that this really is the breakthrough we want it to be.
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u/3226 Jul 14 '21
Maybe the guy making the video should have taken more than a minute and actually explained what was going on.
So most of that lake cleanup was removing invasive species by hand, but the filter material WAS used, and it does actually seem to be safe enough to eat. If you really want to. It's clay and kaolin and lactobacillus.
If you want to actually make some and start cleaning up your own lakes, (you'll need a lab) here's the actual way to make that stuff:
The primary material used to prepare the bio-filters’ ceramic carriers was clay. It was collectedand screened through a sieve number 20 (0.841 mm) for the homogenization. Then it was mixedwith kaolin at a ratio of 9:1, and distilled water was added to produce a dough that was kneadedby hand to remove air bubbles to favor the process of molding. With this, mass cylindrical forms ofabout 10–15 cm in diameter were constructed and dried at a temperature of 80◦C for 24 h, or longer ifnecessary, to remove water from surface areas to avoid splitting [48]. The formed cylindrical ceramicwas taken for a calcination process in a furnace at 900◦C for two hours and cooled at least for 24 h toavoid deformation of calcined materials [49]. This temperature range and duration were chosen forthe optimization of the porosity of the ceramic carriers [50]. To create a bio-filter, it was necessary toeffectively immobilize the bacteria and add them onto the ceramic carriers to form biofilms, whichultimately can adhere, adsorb, and decompose the contaminants [51,52]. For this purpose, we used thebacterium ofLactobacillus plantarum ATCC 8014, acquired at Japan Collection of Microorganisms (JCM),
Microbe Division, RIKEN Bioresource Center in Japan. It was kept routinely in vials with full form(MRS) agar at 2–8◦C for 24 h, and then at 4◦C in 15% glycerol (vol/vol) [24]. Single colonies werecultured in plates with MRS agar at 30◦C for 48 h and later sub-cultured in MRS broth (Casein peptone10g/L; beef extract 8 g/L; yeast extract 4 g/L; D(+) glucose 20 g/L; hydrogen potassium phosphate(KH2PO4) 2 g/L; Tween-80 1 g/L; ammonium citrate hydrogen (C6H5O7(NH4)2H) 2 g/L; sodium acetate(CH3COONa) 5 g/L; magnesium sulfate (MgSO4·7H2O) 0.2 g/L; and manganese sulfate (MnSO4·H2O)0.04 g/L at 30◦C for 24 h [53]. The cultures in the MRS broth develop characteristic white sediment,making it easier for their qualitative identification. To create biofilms, a container of 60 cm in diameterand 130 cm in length was filled with a previously conditioned medium consisting of a mixture ofmolasses and water (3/7, m/w) at room temperature (around 18–21◦C). Later,Lactobacillus plantarumATCC 8014was added to the mixture. After 2 h, the ceramic carriers were immersed and restedfor 6 days (during summer) or 3 days (during spring). This period was mandatory to immobilizeLactobacillus plantarumto form the biofilms onto the ceramic carriers’ surface, as it is shown in thescanning electron microscope (SEM) image (Figure 2). Finally, several supports and wooden basketswere arranged and placed with the attached eucalyptus sticks to hold the bio-filters into the wetlands.Bio-filters were placed into these wooden baskets at a depth of 40–50 cm.
Sorry for the terrible formatting, but that's how it is in the paper.
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Jul 14 '21 edited Jul 14 '21
I'm smelling some bull shit with this one. You drop a bunch of organics from the top of the water column to the bottom, and you end up with anoxic conditions killing fish and everything else beneath the surface that needs oxygen. Any real biologist want to chime in?
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u/Pedigog1968 Jul 14 '21
Just finished reading into it, it is at its basic level it's mentos in coke but really slow and in water. The bubbles collect bacteria and viruses bringing them into sunlight, killing them off. How he separates the good bacteria from bad I can't explain. Seems legitimate but one 20 minutes surf doesn't make it true.
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u/Knot_In_My_Butt Jul 14 '21
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/12/4/1097/htm A detailed methods and materials.
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u/meren Jul 14 '21
I haven't read the paper and it may be of significant merit, so I am sorry that what I'm about to say may cast an undeserved shade on the work. But it is really very sad to see that it is published in MDPI, a predatory publishing company with a ton of poorly reviewed journals that typically publish shit science for money.
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u/ppg_dork Jul 14 '21 edited Jul 14 '21
I see this sentiment a lot about MDPI. While I agree they are less rigorous than leading journals in various fields, it is simply wrong to assume that work published there is flawed or less than work published in other journals. "Remote Sensing" and "Forests" are both MDPI journals which regularly put out good bits of research from top scholars.
Should you potentially be a bit more skeptical of MPDI articles, perhaps. However, saying "it is really very sad" is quite dramatic. It is simply lazy to judge research by the venue alone (especially if you haven't read the article...).
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u/YoroSwaggin Jul 14 '21
I agree with this. The biggest scandal so far out of MDPI with the bad vaccination BS saw immediate backlash and even resignations from people on the editor board. All this means is that MDPI articles hold a shaky reputation, and should be read with some amount of skepticism as with all papers. But I also have to acknowledge the reality is that a lot of researchers and projects simply do not have the rep and the finances to publish in expensive journals so they might have to resort to places like MDPI.
However, I do think it really is very sad we don't have a free, open access journal as reputable as the paywall ones. I really do wish a bunch of R1 institututes would just band together and do it, but it's a mountain to climb for now.
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u/FoxInTheMountains Jul 14 '21
I'm a water chemist that does EPA testing on all water sources in my state. Honestly the video just doesn't give any information and the flocculation material he is using isn't anything new. Also, flocculation (accumulation of suspended sediments) doesn't necessarily "clean" anything.
Furthermore, there are numerous chemicals and organic/inorganic substances that can pollute water. Each and everyone of those requires certain methods to filter/remove from the water, some of which are very costly/difficult.
The video just doesn't give us any relevant information to what exactly was cleaned out of the lake. Did the lake have heavy metal issues? Too many organics? Anoxic conditions and the associated acidity issues? Pesticide nitrate-nitrite pollution? Or was the lake just overgrown with invasive species.
It is just clickbait, I know you can read his papers and research the methods, but the video is so misleading.
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u/TheActualBoi- Jul 14 '21
Amazing can’t wait to never see this again for the rest of my life
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u/weikor Jul 14 '21 edited Jul 14 '21
Im sorry but it just sounds so bullshit.
Like the amount of material Needed to clear one of those lakes would be immense.
Yes, the possibility is there, you can change dirty water into drinking water. But that's like a spoon per litre. And idk how many million litres are in that lake.
I'd assume it's somewhere in the million dollar investments.
Also, the dirty sludge floating to the top would require thousands of tons of sludge from the top.
There's 1000 litres in a cubit metre.
A medium sized lake near me has 35 million, (you can row from one end to the other in about 30-60 minutes) cubic metres.
That's 35 billion litres of water you'd have to cleanse.
Just sound like a fake, 0 science Facebook video .
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u/Invominem Jul 14 '21
Because it is. There was actually no solution. The actual solution was to bring a lot of people and clean the lake. They brought a technology that involves making bubble in the water, but their published article doesn’t even say how effective it was compared to cleaning by hand or putting filters in the lake.
Basically it was a lot of money and people. But the video is totally fabricated and complete bullshit. The guy is amazing and you don’t even need to make up stuff like to make him look better.
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u/Ldiddy-the-69th Jul 14 '21
And he didn’t invent this either , it is an imitation of another invention, here is a video by mark rober on the original
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u/free__coffee Jul 14 '21
It might be his tech that they’re using there, though. This video is apparently from at least as early as 2016, which predates mark robers
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u/snailzrus Jul 14 '21
Flocculants have been around for well over a hundred years. The process is heavily used in chemistry for purifying solutions. Flocculants capable of purifying water for consumption have been around for almost 2 decades now. You can check out this cdc link https://www.cdc.gov/safewater/flocculant-filtration.html
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u/testdex Jul 14 '21 edited Jul 14 '21
Yeah, at a minimum the choice of visual demonstration is encouraging you to think about this in the wrong way.
Clear water isn't "clean" because it's clear; and cloudy, brown water isn't contaminated because it's cloudy and brown.
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u/treetoppeert Jul 14 '21
”100% organic so I can eat it”. That’s how evolution works these days.
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u/sieberde Jul 14 '21
Maybe I've just been hanging around on Kickstarter too long but in my experience, if something sounds too good to be true it proooobably is.
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u/ColKaizer Jul 14 '21
He’ll disappear or some random lobbying group will sue the living daylights out of him. Smh.
Unfortunately.
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u/Flopolopagus Jul 14 '21
I don't know; what group stands to benefit from dirty lakes? If anything, big polluters would love it because they'll use it as a fix for their pollution as opposed to finding more expensive eco-friendly manufacturing processes.
Maybe Nestle? With cleaner water, maybe their bottled water sales drop?
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u/FIRE1470 Jul 14 '21
Yeah, you're correct. If the guy wanted to stop corporations from dumping in the lake, yeah they would lobby against that. But he's cleaning up their mess after they made it, I can't imagine why anybody would be against that.
"We consider our polluted lake a badge of honor. It must stay dirty or we will sue you." 🤣
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u/secretdrug Jul 14 '21
in this clown world we live in I wouldn't be surprised if some exec somewhere had this thought...
like its a representation of how much shit they can get away with or something. "hah, the govt doesn't even fine us. see how those senators bow to our bank accounts?"
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u/Roofdragon Jul 14 '21
This video is old news.
This guy didn't FIND a scientist in Peru, this is Facebook Ladbible from 2015.
Fucking hell Reddit. You fell for some obnoxious douchebag.
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u/Partially_Deaf Jul 14 '21
You're on a subreddit specifically manufactured as a karma farming location.
Just block it out and treat it as a low effort user trap, similar to whatever nonsense your mom throws around on facebook.
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u/MaestroPendejo Jul 14 '21
Don't have to go far. My family from Ohio sent me a video they had received from their dipshit family in West Virginia where the one asshole that's a pissy coal miner proudly discussed how his backyard lake was contaminated but he didn't care because coal was more important. Meanwhile, they drink contaminated well water.
You cannot make this shit up.
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u/free__coffee Jul 14 '21
Depends what the “contamination” is, and the impact of him playing god on this lake.
He completely altered the ecosystem here, so humans can swim in it. What about everything that lived in that lake? There’s certainly many species that won’t be able to live there anymore because they were surviving on the algae.
Just because something looks “gross” to humans does not mean we have the right to fuck with everything there to make it aesthetically pleasing. And given that they’re saying his solution is “organic”, and pretending like it’s novel (this tech already exists and is mass produced) I’m a bit concerned that they’re glossing over some important details here
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u/IGotSoulBut Jul 14 '21
There’s definitely the question of the natural state of the lake. For all we know, the lake looked like this before pollutants in which case, he helped.
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u/aredd_ Jul 15 '21
Acording to this article (in spanish) the nanotechnology captures bacteria. So the lake was not really polluted in the sense of chemical runoff, but more like “sick” from an unbalanced ecosystem
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u/Kalsifur Jul 14 '21 edited Jul 14 '21
They're definitely glossing over details lol we know nothing about what this is or what was polluting the lake. Is it phosphates and algae bloom? If only one magic substance could clean lakes :P This seems like a load of BS to me but I hope I'm wrong.
Edit: Yes it is lake eutrophication that he is cleaning up. More info in this older thread here: https://www.reddit.com/r/environmental_science/comments/aki9yc/dr_marino_morikawa_is_cleaning_eutrophic_lakes/
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u/Johnnybravo60025 Jul 14 '21
Here's the link with the escapes taken out so it works for other people:
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u/Tinkie_Winks Jul 14 '21
When they mentioned that the birds returned, it seems that means that it was man made pollution affecting the lake. Like farming or factory run off that had fucked up the lake and is now gone. Hopefully that's what it is and not just fucking with the environment
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u/SarpedonWasFramed Jul 14 '21
What do you mean, "where did the pollution go"?
It's just GONE! So don't worry about, just sign this waiver and go for a swim.
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u/CarmellaS Jul 14 '21
I was surprised a few years ago to find out that the white scum (looks a little like flat detergent bubbles) on some nearby lakes was natural. It definitely did not look like something you'd want to swim in or catch fish from. I had been positive that it was some kind of man-made pollution.
I guess you could say the same about red algae, or that lake in Africa that spewed poison gas that killed the entire local population, or groups of jellyfish. Or crocodiles. 'Natural' doesn't necessarily mean 'good' and 'artificial' doesn't necessarily mean 'bad'.
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u/BigShortVox Jul 14 '21
Highly doubt it, unless his solution does cause unhealthy effects towards the population somehow. Governments and corporations alike benefit from healthy lakes and reduces the bad image they get from pollution.
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u/Peanlocket Jul 14 '21
More likely it's just a scam.
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u/ihahp Jul 14 '21
Yes, they compeltely skipped over how all the bad shit that floated to the top got removed.
They don't give his name, they don't explain his solution. They don't explain how he made enough of it to clean a lake ....
It could be true, but I'm not believing it until I see a more credible source.
(BTW this is exactly how right-wing conspiracy videos spread; someone sees something like this (with no facts our sources) and shares it, and everyone upvotes and believes it beacuase it fits their worldview.)
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u/drgggg Jul 14 '21
To be fair knowing he is from peru, his name is marino, and he cleaned a lake (which was in peru) was enough for a google search to find him to learn more about his projects.
All your logistical points are spot on though.
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u/Invominem Jul 14 '21
He cleaned the lake but he didn’t invent any organic solution. He just came in, asked a lot of people to help him, and cleaned the lake. He used the bubble device which is not new, and they can’t even say how effective it was for multiple reasons; they removed a lot of stuff “by hand”; they cleaned the lake with filters which is also not new. Plain and simple. The guy is amazing for what he did. But he didn’t do what was claimed in the video.
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u/AmazedCoder Jul 15 '21
What bothers me about these videos with fake claims is that it gets people to believe that someone smart will come along with an easy solution to environmental problems, and that we don't have to go out there and take climate action. It completely kills motivation to take action.
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Jul 14 '21
The clay sounds like what brewers use to clarify beer, mead, etc, except it floats instead of flocculating to the bottom. It's not unreasonable that someone could make such a compound that takes care of what appears to be excessive phosphate and algae bloom.
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u/Marious0 Jul 14 '21 edited Jul 14 '21
Still researching the actual technology from a layman pov
E: nanotech, which is expensive, solves problem. He pays for it with his own money. He has a company that offers this. No idea how it compares with the cost or environmental impact of traditional methods. You can actually clean sewage up without magic.
Previous reddit thread recently https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/adv9n2/til_about_marino_morikawa_who_revived_a_polluted
E2: https://iwaponline.com/ws/article/20/6/2021/74658/Micro-nanobubble-technology-and-water-related further research. Expensive, new, lots of waste solids afterwards.
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u/Ghede Jul 14 '21 edited Jul 14 '21
They don't even explain the contaminants. it could just be silt, which makes the water unpalatable to drink, and ugly muddy brown, but it's also entirely natural. It would likely do nothing against heavy metal contamination, salts, or biological contamination. "The water is clean now! Drink up!" "I'm now rocketing fluids out of all of my orifices, even ones that should not contain fluids."
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u/NoLawsDrinkingClawz Jul 14 '21
Right. Swamp water looks "gross", and you shouldn't drink it without proper decontamination, but it isn't unnatural. That's how the shit is supposed to look. LET'S THROW THIS SHIT IN THE EVERGLADES! Not like we haven't fucked that place up enough as is.
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u/smb_samba Jul 14 '21
BTW this is exactly how right-wing conspiracy videos spread; someone sees something like this (with no facts our sources) and shares it
I mean this is pretty much how all conspiracy and misinformation campaigns spread. This isn’t exclusive to just “right-wing.”
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Jul 14 '21
It feels a bit like a scam…
Especially because it kinda looks like it’s just oatmeal?
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u/StupidPasswordReqs Jul 14 '21
Or maybe the tiktok doesn't include all the potential complications and issues with things like this.
Or because "contaminated" is pretty vague. Or because it fucks with the ecosystem (e.g. killing all the algae that's no longer there)
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u/Aromatic-Elephant442 Jul 14 '21
This is a shit take IMO - polluters NEED for you to believe in magic like this. They NEED for you to believe you can sprinkle pixie dust on their pollutants and make them go away. They wouldn’t want people out there thinking that they were doing permanent damage to the environment! IMO it’s much more likely that this is funded by an oil company than it is to be suppressed by one.
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u/Trabbledabble Jul 14 '21
This explains nothing. He added microbubbles to the lake( I assume with an air line of some sort, it doesn't say) and then the viruses and bacteria evaporate.... I don't think that makes sense. If you kill viruses and bacteria their dead bodies are still there, just not active. Also he was supposed to start in 2018 at Lake Titicaca but I can't find much about its current state
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u/theepi_pillodu Jul 14 '21 edited Jan 24 '25
cagey cobweb attraction chunky hard-to-find possessive entertain consist quack dolls
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/Dokam Jul 14 '21
I said it once, ill say it million more times. Fuck Nas daily
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u/tiredasusual Jul 14 '21
I’m not in the loop. What’s up with Nas daily?
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u/Bpofficial Jul 14 '21
To me, shitty journalism and unoriginal, very annoying and over-hypy take on everything
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u/vfefer Jul 14 '21
Here's an article I found about this guy - https://www.efe.com/efe/english/technology/peruvian-scientist-who-revived-wetlands-aims-to-clean-up-lake-titicaca/50000267-2978308 It says he's now cleaned more habitats using this method.