China’s innovative solution to tackling toxic and damaging oil spills: ‘urgent priority’

Chinese researchers have found a cost-effective solution to cleaning up toxic oil spills which can threaten wildlife and human health

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Chinese scientists have found a way to turn sphagnum moss into an absorbent material that can help to clean up toxic oil spills. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 4:00pm, 13 Apr 2025

Chinese scientists have turned moss into an oil-absorbing material that repels water and could be used as a cheap, efficient and environmentally friendly way to clean up dangerous oil spills.

Often the result of burst pipelines or damage to oil rigs and ships, oil spills can take months or years to clean up, while exposing people to toxic compounds and harming wildlife.

Various methods are deployed to clean up oil spills, including the use of absorbent materials to soak up oil to separate it from water.

Bio-based absorbents, such as cotton and fruit peels, are cost-effective and environmentally friendly materials, but they often have low absorption capacity, limited water repellent properties and poor reusability.

“This study used natural porous sphagnum moss as a raw material to develop a novel, economical, efficient, and easily recoverable adsorbent via surface modification,” the team said in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports on April 6.

An oil spill in the Caple River, Ecuador, occurred in March after a damaged pipeline polluted several rivers and left hundreds of thousands of people without drinking water. Photo: AFP

The oil absorbent, developed by researchers from Guizhou Education University, was made by treating the abundant plant material sphagnum moss with chemicals to alter its properties, resulting in an oil absorption capacity that outperformed conventional bio-based absorbents.