Chopped up banana peels pulled lead straight out of polluted river water in a Brazilian lab test.
Chemists in Brazil dried and minced banana peels, then ran polluted river water through them.
The metals stuck to the peel within about ten minutes, and the same filter worked for eleven reuses.
Banana peels are free food waste doing a job that usually needs costly, sometimes toxic filters.
The banana peel isn’t chemically “destroying” the lead. It is adsorbing it — essentially binding the metal ions to functional groups on the peel’s surface.
The resulting banana peel is now contaminated with concentrated lead. You can’t simply put the used peel on the compost heap or use it as fertiliser. The captured lead has to go somewhere safe.
Sources: Sao Paulo State University
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