Danielle Stevenson: Using Mushrooms to Heal Polluted Places | Urgent Futures Ep. 12

Pollution is a massive problem—yet it rarely gets the kind of play other climate issues receive. But did you know that some scientists and mycologists are using mycelium to detoxify contaminated sites? It's pretty incredible stuff—and my guest this week, Danielle Stevenson, is a leading expert in this field of 'mycoremediation.'

Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds signal in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.

My guest this week is Danielle Stevenson.

Danielle Stevenson is a multidisciplinary scientist, mycologist and environmental problem-solver who works with soils, fungi, plants and people to address wastes and pollution in creative and circular ways. She holds a Bachelors of Humanities from the University of Victoria and a PhD in Environmental Toxicology from the University of California Riverside. Her dissertation research focused on bioremediation of brownfields with fungi and plants. She also founded and runs D.I.Y. Fungi (est. 2012) for research, education and action around fungal food, medicine, waste management and remediation, and Healing City Soils (est. 2015) with the Compost Education Centre to provide soil metal testing, resources, and community bioremediation for people growing food.

She currently serves on the Department of Toxic Substances Control's Equitable Community Revitalization Grant (ECRG) Treatment Technology Council (TTC) and the Board of Corenewal. She is involved in many projects and organizations around the world supporting regeneration of lands and waters, environmental education and community-capacity building. Learn more about her work here: https://www.danielle-stevenson.com/ and https://diyfungi.blog/ and connect over: linkedin.com/in/danielle-stevenson.

Wow, this conversation with Danielle was so illuminating—and, in its way super hopeful. As I’ve mentioned before, I take the “urgent” in the title of Urgent Futures broadly—it doesn’t have to indicate a blaring alarm. There can be urgent play, imagination, and comedy, for example. But in this case there really is a blaring alarm: pollution is a major threat, and as Danielle discusses, it just doesn’t seem to get as much attention as some other climate change issues. I’m fascinated by possibilities of fungi for bioremediation—for bringing life back into contaminated sites, especially through Danielle’s focus in “mycoremediation.” Danielle is one of the leading minds working in this arena. These types of solutions show why ecological approaches to crisis hold so much more potential than trying to build a magical quick fix.

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