About MycoEco
An open, public-good informational project about low-cost biological pre-treatment for water systems.
Mission
MycoEco helps communities in regions with water-quality problems explore practical, low-cost ways to improve their water systems by adding biological pre-treatment layers. We focus on what is teachable, repeatable, and locally maintainable — not on selling anything.
What this project is
- An open, free field guide.
- A set of practical patterns that communities can adapt to their own materials and climates.
- A starting point for conversations with local experts.
What this project is not
MycoEco is not medical, first-aid, or treatment advice. Nothing on this site should be relied on as guidance for medical care, poisoning response, emergency response, or drinking-water treatment.
- Not medical or health advice.
- Not first-aid, poisoning, or emergency-care advice.
- Not drinking-water treatment instructions, dosing, timings, or recipes.
- Not engineering certification.
- Not a drinking-water certification or guarantee.
- Not a substitute for trained local health workers, water professionals, public-health authorities, or qualified emergency services.
For medical questions or emergencies, contact qualified local help (your local emergency number, nearest clinic or hospital, community health worker, or poisons information centre). For drinking-water treatment, follow the guidance of your local health authority and qualified water professionals.
Trust posture
We try to be calm, careful, and honest about limits. Mycelium is a powerful living material, but it is one layer in a safer water system, not a complete answer. We will continue to revise the site as community feedback and field experience accumulate.
Editorial scope
The guidance on this site is grounded in the published mycoremediation, slow-sand-filtration, and household water-treatment literature. We have deliberately constrained recommendations to interventions that:
- Are reproducible by a non-specialist with locally available materials,
- Have a plausible mechanism in the peer-reviewed literature for the load-reduction effects we describe, and
- Do not, on their own, claim to make water safe to drink.
Where the underlying science is uncertain, we say so. Where established drinking-water guidance applies (chiefly WHO and equivalent national authorities), we defer to it.
Working with local people
The best results come from partnership with the people who already know your land and water:
- Local health workers and clinics.
- Water and sanitation engineers.
- Community elders and farmers.
- NGOs working on water, sanitation, and hygiene.
- University extension services and mycology groups.
If you adapt this guide for your community, please consider sharing what you learn so others can benefit.
Further reading
The following references are good starting points for the science and engineering background underneath this guide. They are independent of MycoEco and are cited here for transparency, not endorsement.
Mycoremediation and mycofiltration
- Stamets, P. (2005). Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World. Ten Speed Press. Popular foundational text on mycofiltration concepts.
- Singh, H. (2006). Mycoremediation: Fungal Bioremediation. Wiley-Interscience. Technical reference on fungal degradation of pollutants.
- Pointing, S. B. (2001). "Feasibility of bioremediation by white-rot fungi." Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology 57(1–2): 20–33. Review of white-rot enzyme systems and their environmental application.
- Akhtar, N. & Mannan, M. A.-U. (2020). "Mycoremediation: Expunging environmental pollutants." Biotechnology Reports 26: e00452. Modern overview of fungal bioremediation strengths and limits.
Slow sand filtration and household water treatment
- World Health Organization. Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality (current edition). The reference framework for what counts as safe drinking water; available at who.int.
- World Health Organization. Results of Round I of the WHO International Scheme to Evaluate Household Water Treatment Technologies and subsequent rounds. Independent performance evaluations of household water-treatment products.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Household Water Treatment resources, available at cdc.gov. Practical methods, including boiling, chlorination, filtration, and solar disinfection.
- Huisman, L. & Wood, W. E. (1974). Slow Sand Filtration. WHO. Foundational technical reference for the sand-filter geometry the mycelium bed extends.
Indicator organisms and microbial water quality
- Edberg, S. C., Rice, E. W., Karlin, R. J., & Allen, M. J. (2000). "Escherichia coli: the best biological drinking water indicator for public health protection." Journal of Applied Microbiology 88(S1): 106S–116S.
- WHO & UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme. Drinking-water reports for current global access and quality data.
If you are a researcher or practitioner with corrections or suggested additions, please get in touch via the project repository.
Privacy
This site does not use trackers, cookies, or third-party analytics by default. If anonymous, privacy-respecting page metrics are added in the future, this section will be updated to clearly describe what is collected and how to opt out.
License
Content on this site is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. You are encouraged to share, translate, and adapt it. Please keep the safety messaging intact.
Contact
Reach out through the project's repository or your usual community channels. This is a collaborative, evolving project.