Are all metals biodegradable?

Question

If not, is there such a thing as biodegradable metal? Please elaborate =)

Answer 1

Nina--

You should be a bit more specific. Most metals except gold

and platinum will oxidize fairly easily but bio (life) degradable

implies that plants, animals, bacteria etc. break them down.

Uranium 235 and Putonium will "oxidize" but they do not become "safe" for 10's of thousands of years. They kill

life forms in high concentration so "biodegradation" wouldn't

be possible. In very low concentrations they can be absorbed.

Answer 2

Metals are non-organic. So they do not biodegrade. Depending on how chemically active they are, they will be "absorbed" into the environment when they oxidize or form salts. Some metals are poisonous (mercury). So you don't want them in any major concentrations anywhere, especially in the atmosphere, drinking water, soil, or waters where people fish.

Answer 3

You've run into a technicality that others have already pointed out. Biodegradation is what happens to an organic (carbon-based) compound when a biological organism (usually bacteria) "eats" it (uses the carbon for energy).

Metals don't have carbon that can be used for energy (some alloys have carbon, but it's in inorganic form), so they can't be biodegraded, technically. But they can be bioremediated (cleaned out of the environment by life forms) other ways. One example is phytoremediation. Plants (phyto) can sort of suck metal up and store it in themselves. It can even be sucked back out of them and used it again, but it's expensive. Usually the dead plants just get treated as toxic waste and put in a more secure landfill.

Here's a cool example I found on Wikipedia- after the Chernobyl accident, sunflowers were used to remove uranium from the soil.

Answer 4

There are some bacteria that eat Iron.  That's why the Titanic is going to cave in on itself.

Answer 5

Depending on the metal you would be talking hundreds probably thousands of years steel and iron rust. But others like gold and silver last for thousands of years without degrading at all e.g Egyptian jewelery has been found that looks new after 3500 years.

Answer 6

yes metals are from the earth wich means the earth can process them the only thing is it takes a long long time for some metals