EVERY cloud has a silver lining. A contaminated lake designated hazardous is turning out to be a source of novel chemicals that could help fight migraines and cancer.
“It’s exciting to know that something toxic and dangerous might contain something of value,” says Andrea Stierle, a chemist at the University of Montana in Butte.
Berkeley Pit Lake, also in Butte, filled with groundwater after the copper mine closed in 1982. Dissolved metal compounds such as iron pyrites give the lake a pH of 2.5 that makes it impossible for most aquatic life to survive. In 1995 Stierle discovered novel forms…
