经济学人下载:清道夫平菇

Science and technology
科学技术

Bioremediation
生物降解

Bottom feeders
清道夫平菇

A novel way of dealing with an unpleasant problem
解决烦人难题的新颖方法

For your delight and delectation
愿你欢愉

DESPITE their name, disposable nappies are notoriously difficult to dispose of.
一次性尿布，虽然它名字的英文含义为可随意处理的，然而对它的处理却是一个老大难问题。

Studies of landfills suggest they may take centuries to rot away.
垃圾填埋区的研究显示它们可能要花上几个世纪才会完全腐烂。

But Alethia Vázquez-Morillas of the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City thinks she has found a method of speeding the process up.
但墨西哥城自治都市大学的阿莱蒂娅·巴斯克斯·莫莱拉丝认为她已经找到加速此过程的方法。

As she and her colleagues describe in Waste Management, cultivating the right type of mushroom on soiled nappies can break down 90% of the material they are made of within two months.
正如她与其同事在《废物处理》一文中所描述，以尿布为基壤，培植恰当种类的菇类，能在两个月内将其分解90%。

Within four, they are degraded completely.
四个月后，它们将被完全降解。

What is more, she says, despite their unsavoury diet the fungi in question, Pleurotus ostreatus, are safe to eat.
她表示，尽管所讨论的糙皮侧耳口味不佳，但食用安全。

To prove the point she has, indeed, eaten them.
为了证明这一点，她确确实实曾亲口品尝过。

The culinary use of oyster mushrooms was one reason why she picked them for the experiment.
平菇的食用价值正是她选择其进行实验的原因之一。

The species is frequently used in stir-fries and is often added to soups.
该食材经常用于煎炸以及常常被添加至汤中。

The other reason was that Pleurotus ostreatus is widely used in what is known as mycoremediation—the deployment of fungi to clean up waste.
而另一个原因是平菇被广泛用于所谓的茵核降解—即是使用真菌去清理垃圾。

It is, for example, already grown on agricultural materials such as wheat and barley straw,
比方说，它已经在处理诸如小麦和大麦秸秆等农业废料以及在类似咖啡渣和特基拉

and industrial waste like coffee grounds and the leftovers from making tequila.
酒废渣等工业废料上得到逐步推广。

Dr Vázquez-Morillas and her colleagues were trying to extend the oyster mushroom’s own culinary range.
巴斯克斯·莫莱拉丝博士与其同事正试图拓展平菇原有的烹饪范围。

The reason nappies are difficult to break down has nothing to do with their use.
尿布难于降解跟它有没有被使用过毫无关系。

Even a clean nappy would hang around for a long time in a dump.
即便是干净的尿布也会在垃圾场长期留存。

The main ingredient of a nappy is cellulose, an annoyingly persistent material.
尿布的主要组成部分是纤维素，它是一种烦人的顽固性物质。

Pleurotus, however, grows on dead or dying trees in the wild and is thus well provided with enzymes that break cellulose down.
然而在野外生长在已死或将死树木上的平菇，将恰如其分地分泌出能分解纤维素的酶。

And, since Mexicans alone throw away 5 billion nappies every year, there is plenty of material from this source for them to get their mycelia into.
而且，既然仅墨西哥每年就有50亿张尿布被丢弃，那么必定有大量此类原料正等着它们的菌丝去分解。

The idea that the result might be sold and eaten may be controversial but it is not absurd.
销售并食用尿布平菇的想法或许具有争议性，但却并不荒唐。

The nappies the researchers used were contaminated only with urine, not faeces.
研究人员使用的尿布仅有尿渍，并没有粪便。

A healthy person’s urine is sterile and Dr Vázquez-Morillas also treated the nappies with steam, to make sure.
健康人类的尿液是无菌的，而巴斯克斯·莫莱拉丝博士也对尿布进行了蒸汽高温消毒以确保安全。

Such treatment would kill the nasty bugs in faeces, too, though,
这样的处理也将杀死粪便中的肮脏虫子，如果有的话，

so mushrooms grown on treated nappies should, in theory, be safe to eat.
因此生长处理过的尿布上的平菇在理论上应该是可以安全食用。

In practice, overcoming the yuck factor might be an insuperable barrier to marketing nappy-grown fungi,
实际上，对于销售长在尿布上的平菇而言，克服这种主观上令人反感的因素或许是一道不可逾越的障碍，

and the cost of the steam treatment could make the exercise futile.
而且蒸汽高温消毒的花销可能是不切实际的。

Mycoremediation of this sort does not, however, depend for its success on selling the results.
然而，此类茵核降解的成功之处并不依赖于销售其产物。

Merely getting rid of what would otherwise hang around indefinitely is worthwhile.
仅仅是摆脱那些难处理的废物就物有所值了，不然的话那些垃圾可就要无限期地困扰我们了。

And of the fungi themselves, Dr Vázquez-Morillas observes,
而且对于这些菌类本身，巴斯克斯·莫莱拉丝博士评论道，

they are cleaner than most of the vegetables you can find in the market, at least in Mexico.
至少在墨西哥，它们要比你在市场上能找得到的大多数蔬菜干净得多。