To Nullify Lead, Add a Bunch of Fish Bones

Workers at a lot in the South Prescott neighborhood in west Oakland, Calif., where fishbone meal was applied to tainted soil.

By FELICITY BARRINGER
Published: New York Times, July 20, 2011

OAKLAND, Calif. — Alaskan pollock is usually the faux stand-in for crab meat or the main ingredient in fast-food fish sandwiches. But now the flaky fish is moving into a new realm — as part of the solution to one of the nation’s longest-running toxic waste problems.

Today, there is more lead contamination in America’s cities than any federal or state agency could ever afford to clean up and haul away. So scientists and regulators are trying a new strategy, transforming the dangerous metal into a form the human body cannot absorb, thus vastly reducing the risk of lead poisoning.

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