National Outbreak Reporting System (NORS) (CDC launched NORS in 2009 where public health departments voluntarilly enter outbreak information).

Phytoremediation:

Phytoremdiation is the use of plants in bioremediation, the process in which living organisms are used to remove or detoxify pollutants in the enviornment.

Some root cell membrane channels and transporters lack absolute specificity and can take up heavy metals like aluminum and other toxins. Although iin most cases uptake of toxins is letal or growth limiting, some plants have evolved the ability to sequester or relase these compounds into the atmosphere.

Phytoremediation can work in a number of ways with both aquatic and soil pollutants. Plants may secrete a substance form their roots that breaks down the contaminant. More often, the harmful chemical enters the roots and is transported to the shoot system, mkaing it easier to remove the chemical from a contaminated site. After the nuclear reactor disaster at Chernobyl in northern Ukraine, sunflowers effectively removed radioactive cesium from nearby lakes. The plants were floated in foram supports ont he surface of the lakes and latter collected.

Poplars naturally take up trichloroethylene (TCE) from the soil and metabolize it into CO2 and chlorine.