Comment on Plastic-eating bacteria discovered in the ocean
Brummbaer@pawb.social 2 days agoThere are plenty of wood eating bacteria and fungus all around you and yet wooden buildings still exists.
These microorganisms need a favourable environment to start digesting wood, for example. That’s why you can stack firewood outside without it being decomposed, but leave a tree out in the mud and it gets eaten.
There are exceptions, something like Serpula lacrymans, can bring down whole buildings, but even there the wood needs to be humid enough for it to be attacked by this fungus.
thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world 2 days ago
We don’t use wood for clinical medically settings though or long term food preservation or flying planes or cars etc etc etc. not being able to rot is one of the reasons they are used in these applications
Brummbaer@pawb.social 2 days ago
We don’t use that anymore, but all of these things have been used in this applications, plastic has more advantages than not rotting in some cases.
Wooden airplanes were still used successfully in the 2nd world war and in general aviation they still exist.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_DR400 - here is a widely used example.