Plants may clean up chemical pollutants

New research being undertaken at the Institute of Technology, Carlow, could mean that plants will be used to detect and clean up PCB (polychlorinated biphenyls) chemicals that have been causing wide spread pollution and that have been shown to cause cancer in animals.

The research, which is to be showcased at the BioNet Annual Conference to be held at the Institute of Technology, Carlow on Wednesday and Thursday, December 15-16, 2004, could be extremely commercial, according to Xuemei Liu, who leads the project.