How tough do you have to be to survive in Baltimore? Try breathing toxic waste instead of air.

That’s what University of Maryland scientists have discovered a tiny microbe doing at the stinky, oily bottom of Charm City’s stupendously polluted harbor. Down there, in muck as oozy as black jello, this creature can actually survive on PCBs — one of the most harmful pollutants in U.S. waters — and, in the process, break them down into something less dangerous.

Now, researchers are hoping to harness this nasty bit of nature’s magic and use it to help other PCB-laden waterways, such as the Anacostia River. Their goal is to create a new kind of biological cleaning crew, bred from the original Baltimore stock.

“Up until now, nobody knew what to do with PCBs. They just lived with them,” said Kevin Sowers, one of the scientists who led this research. “If we can do this, it will be the first time that we’ve been able to actually treat PCBs with a natural process.”

This story begins at the Inner Harbor. It might look like a nice place to tourists, who generally stay above the waterline. But on the bottom, it’s a different, much uglier story.

For decades, the harbor has been a catch basin for toxic dumping, gasoline leaks and runoff from dirty city streets. All that settled on the bottom to become a kind of super-sludge, which is to pollution what Washington is to lawyers. You could try, but you probably couldn’t cram in any more.

“This is Baltimore Harbor,” Sowers said one recent day in his laboratory, as researcher Birthe Kjellerup was opening a Mason jar full of black, viscous mud collected from the bottom. She was wearing gloves, since the stuff, and its rotten-egg smell, tends to linger on anything it touches.

Full Story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/14/AR2007101401243.html