23
January 2003
Dioxins: reduced circumstances
Polychlorinated dioxins and furans are the potent and persistent environmental pollutants involved in the the Seveso accident in 1976 and a serious animal food contamination incident in Belgium in May 1999. During the past decade, mixed cultures of anaerobic bacteria have been found that can dehalogenate dioxins to produce intermediates with reduced environmental persistence. The report in this issue of the isolation of one of these bacteria in pure culture may bring the prospects of effective bioremediation of contaminated sites a step closer. The organism is a Dehalococcoides sp., isolated from sediments in the Spittelwasser, a badly polluted tributary of the Elbe in the Bitterfeld region of Germany.
Reductive dehalogenation of chlorinated dioxins by an anaerobic bacterium
MICHAEL BUNGE, LORENZ ADRIAN, ANGELIKA KRAUS, MATTHIAS OPEL, WILHELM G. LORENZ, JAN R. ANDREESEN, HELMUT G�RISCH & UTE LECHNER
Nature 421, 357–360 (2003); doi:10.1038/nature01237
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