Some Companies Are Cleaning Up With Pollution-Devouring Bacteria : Environment: The cleanup technique is often cheaper and more effective than other options. But it has limitations.

R.B. (Jones) Grubbs is a New Age Mr. Clean.

Instead of killing germs, however, Grubbs supplies them: Bacteria to dissolve grease, tar and sludge. Bacteria to control odors at smelly food factories. And now, bacteria that eat toxic waste.

Some of Grubbs’ bugs-- short for “bacteria under guidance and supervision”--will munch their way through garden-variety gasoline spills. Others will digest crude oil, diesel, coal tar, industrial solvents, chemicals used in antifreeze and a wide array of other unpleasant gunk. They break it down into carbon dioxide, water and benign organic compounds.

“When I first got into the business and I told people what I did, they wanted to wash their hands,” Grubbs said. “ ‘ Bacteria? What’s he spreading?’ ”

Now he’s hailed at cocktail parties as an environmental hero, and his biotechnology company, Solmar Corp. of Orange, sold $1.5 million worth of bacteria last year. About 40% of the bugs were put to work cleaning up contaminated soil or water.

Grubbs is part of a fledgling industry that uses bioremediation, a technology that depends on microbes to decay, detoxify or prevent the creation of hazardous waste. Though not an environmental panacea, proponents say, bioremediation can be a safer--and much cheaper--method for dealing with some of America’s most pervasive pollution problems.

Oil companies have known for years that dumping garden fertilizer on petroleum spills stimulates the bacteria living in soil to break down the waste.

But bioremediation got its big break during the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989, when nutrients added to 74 miles of oil-smeared shoreline in Prince William Sound helped marine micro-organisms break down the oil much faster than in untreated areas--and with no ill effects, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Last year, commercial bioremediation projects generated $20 million to $50 million in revenue, said Thomas G. Zitrides, president of the Washington-based Applied BioTreatment Assn., a 62-member trade group founded two years ago. The group estimates that its market will reach $200 million a year by 1996.

Encouraged by the success of the Valdez cleanup, the EPA will spend $14 million on bioremediation research and development next year. Four years ago, bioremediation wasn’t even a budget item.

The agency is also encouraging private research, attempting to streamline regulatory procedures and sponsoring a variety of demonstration projects.

“We’re interested in pushing it on every front we can,” said Erich Bretthauer, EPA assistant administrator for research and development.

Bretthauer said bioremediation is “an area that offers tremendous potential for dramatically reducing the cost of cleanups for some organic chemicals, and it hasn’t had a loud (advocacy) group out there, like some companies that build incinerators or other things to deal with waste.”

The technology still faces skepticism. Although bioremediation is generally accepted for cleaning up petroleum contamination in soil, it does not work in all applications and has yet to win acceptance as a way of handling more toxic chemicals.

Moreover, the EPA, many large environmental cleanup firms and some environmental groups say the best bioremediation projects employ the microbes that already live at the contaminated site.

“I get concerned about some of the hype that surrounds bioremediation,” said Rebecca J. Goldburg, a biologist with the Environmental Defense Fund. “Getting microbes to break down chemical compounds isn’t like getting cats to catch mice.”

For soil treatment, the main drawbacks to bioremediation are that it requires open space on which to treat the contaminated dirt and time for the bacteria to work--sometimes a year or more depending on the concentration of pollutants.

Moreover, the bugs may become bored with eating waste once the contaminants reach a relatively low level and switch to a food supply that is more plentiful or easier to digest. “Will a kid eat spinach in a chocolate shop?” Grubbs asked. In some cases, bacteria have been unable to reduce pollutants to levels that meet stringent environmental regulations.

But bug-handlers are developing new methods for thwarting this problem as they master the microbiology of degradation. Among other things, they have come up with a variety of chemicals called inducers that essentially act as appetite stimulants.

Despite these limitations, bioremediation has been successful at hundreds of sites nationwide, including oil fields and refineries, diesel and gasoline spills, and leaking underground storage tanks, regulators said. It has also been shown to work on wood preservatives, herbicides and solvents, and is used at 22 federal Superfund toxic waste sites, according to the EPA.

“The technology is here,” said UCI microbial ecologist Dele Ogunseitan, who experiments with inducers. “The question is how to commercialize it and make it a permanent fixture in industry.”

A good bug, Grubbs said, is hard to find. To prevail in the field, it must be able to compete successfully with other microbes. It shouldn’t produce such byproducts as hydrogen sulfide, which smells like rotten eggs. Above all, it must not cause disease.

Many of the largest environmental cleanup companies, however, say there is usually no need to add bacteria at all. They aerate contaminated soil, add water and fertilizer, and wait.

“Take a gram of soil, which weighs about as much as a dime, from your garden. You’ll probably find about a million micro-organisms there,” said Dennis Dineen, chief scientist at McLaren-Hart Environmental Engineering in Irvine, which has cleaned up 18 contaminated sites without adding outside bugs.

“Before I got involved in this stuff, I thought, whoa, we’re messing with nature, and mutants are going to grow, and you’re going to get ‘the thing that ate Los Angeles,’ ” said James J. King, who handles biotechnology applications for Torrance-based International Technology Corp. “That’s so far from the truth. We’re using the stuff that’s already there.”

While bioremediation is often cheaper than other cleanup methods, it is likely to become even more attractive as landfill space gets scarcer. Including the cost of digging up and aerating the dirt, bioremediation typically runs $10 to $80 per cubic yard of contaminated soil, compared to $122 to $810 to excavate it, haul it to a landfill or incinerate it, according to the National Governors’ Assn.

In Southern California, the costs typically range from $15 to $50 per yard, or three to five times cheaper than landfill, said Jim Ross, senior engineer for the Los Angeles region of the California Regional Water Quality Control Board.