Pollution-eating microbes are thriving in infamous NYC canal

For more than 150 years, industrial pollution, chemical waste, and sewage have flowed into Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal. The New York City waterway is often described as one of the most contaminated in the United States.

Yet amid all that toxic muck, life finds a way. Microbes in the Gowanus sediment have evolved methods of coping with and even subsisting off of the contamination, according to new research co-authored by Hénaff. Hundreds of hardy microbe species, equipped with dozens of metabolic pathways for breaking down pollution, live at the bottom of the canal, per the study published April 15 in the Journal of Applied Microbiology. These bacteria, archaea, and viruses are slowly sequestering heavy metals and eating their way through some of the worst compounds lingering in the mud.