Scientists from University of California Riverside have scattered carefully selected plants and fungi on a former industrial site in Los Angeles in the hope of getting rid of the heavy metals and petrochemicals that have contaminated the area for decades. Danielle Stevenson, who is leading the study, says such bioremediation techniques can be much more cost-effective than traditional techniques. "The conventional method of cleaning up sites is just to dig up all the contaminated soil and to dump it somewhere else," she tells AFP. The plants "basically suck up the metals, like lead, into their bodies so that when we pull out the plants, we've removed the lead from the soil." IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES