Mushrooms Are Leading LA's Fire Remediation

Good morning! Welcome to another edition of The Drop In, DoubleBlind’s newsletter serving up independent journalism about psychedelics straight to your inbox!

Today’s lead story checks in on LA’s fire remediation efforts. Angelenos are still far from “okay” after the blaze engulfed the entire city and nearly wiped out Altadena and the Palisades at the top of this year. If you recall, we saw members of the psychedelic community stepping in to help, and we saw wellness influencers trying to make a buck off of this tragedy. (We concluded that late-stage capitalism is, indeed, an illness.) But, where does that leave us now? We checked in with the crew at Mycelium Matters, who have been tirelessly working to bring new data to the forefront about the efficacy of mycoremediation in burn zones. You can read more about it below!

If you keep scrolling, you’ll find stories about ketamine nasal spray, LSD tolerance, legalizing all drugs, and so much more.

Stay hydrated 💧,

Mary Carreón
Editor-In-Chief

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Eight Months After LA Fires, Grassroots Groups Step In Where State Aid Falls Short

It’s been nearly seven months since the fires engulfed Altadena and the Palisades in Los Angeles. While the media has since focused on other issues and state funding has fallen short of providing adequate assistance, on-the-ground remediation efforts in some of the hardest-hit areas are being led by coalitions of concerned citizens armed with straw, spores, and science to clean up the soil toxins, like heavy metals and led, caused by the blaze.

Aixarret Hernandez and Max Esparza of Mycelium Matters are helping lead these efforts. Over the past six months, they have helped bring together the SoCal Post-Fire Bioremediation Coalition. The group—made up of three nonprofits: CoRenewal, the Center for Applied Ecological Remediation (CARE), and Mycelium Matters—has focused not only on how plants and fungi can help remove toxins in burn zones, but also on using this as an opportunity to document the efficacy of bio- and mycoremediation.

“It was really interesting seeing how quick efforts were to the Palisades, but not to Altadena,” Aixarret tells DoubleBlind over Zoom. “We’ve been struggling so hard getting funding for the Altadena site... It’s predominantly Black and Hispanic. And I was like, I want that to be known.”

The SoCal Post-Fire Bioremediation Coalition is working onsite in Altadena with an entirely community-backed approach. Volunteers contribute their time, tools, and even materials like biodegradable cloth to create "wattles" — long filter socks packed with straw and fungal spores to help remove toxins from the soil and nurture it back to optimal health through the use of mushrooms.

These wattles are more than just sandbags with mushrooms. “We’re using a strain called Pleurotus pulmonarius, and that’s a native species in SoCal known to uptake heavy metals and lead,” Aixarret says. “It kickstarts the microorganisms in the soil.”

The coalition is also collecting soil samples for analysis in partnership with UCLA to add bioremediation, a relatively new technique for environmental cleanup, to the scientific literature. Their process combines two techniques: Mycoremediation, which uses fungi to detoxify the soil, and phytoremediation, which relies on native plants, like California buckwheat, to draw out pollutants such as PFAS chemicals and heavy metals. According to Aixarret, they’ve seen early signs of success. “You can tell when they’re filtering or when they’re taking up toxins... the whole side of the wattle would be completely black from the filtering of ash.”

Still, progress is slow, and the process is far from plug-and-play. “It’s a one-year experimental study,” Aixarret says. “If plants die, you have to replace them. If the wattles disintegrate, you have to water them. It’s constant monitoring.”

That timeline means the coalition has to be strategic. They’ve started running wattle-making and soil-testing workshops, not just to stretch their reach but to empower locals to start their own remediation projects. “Rather than us taking on the whole response, we’re trying to empower the community,” Max Esparza tells DoubleBlind. “There are so many sites right now, and we can only focus on one or two or three at a time.”

Despite all the challenges, there are moments of wonder. After one rainfall, the team discovered a previously undocumented mushroom species growing just 10 feet from a burn site, suggesting that nature has a remedy for even the worst tragedies. “If we can find that [the mushroom] does uptake metals and metabolize contaminants... it would be really cool to implement it all over the burn sites,” Max says. “It’d be like a hyper-local fungi.”

However, even in their optimism, Aixarret and Max stress that people should never work with non-native mushrooms in bio- and mycoremediation, such as the Golden Oyster Mushroom. “Never put a non-native species in an area,” Aixarret says. “It could do more harm than good by testing in a manner that’s not ecologically correct.”

At its core, the coalition’s work is about healing—not just the land, but the systems that left some communities to fend for themselves. “They scraped a lot of the sites in Altadena and just took them to a landfill,” Aixarret says. “But they didn’t even alert the owners... There’s a lack of communication.”

Eight months after the fires, the land remains toxic. But, new data could rise from the ashes of this tragedy that may change the way we approach toxic cleanups, thanks to the work of Aixarret, Max, and the SoCal Post-Fire Bioremediation Coalition.

Can You Heal with Psychedelics and Still Be Mormon?

This Friday, we’re diving into the quietly growing world of Latter-Day Saints, exploring psychedelic medicine — from ketamine clinics in Arizona to hushed conversations about ancestral visions and spiritual healing.

Our story traces the journey of Stephanie, a devout Mormon and trauma nurse turned ketamine guide, as she reconciles her faith with her work in psychedelic therapy. Along the way, we meet others walking this line between doctrine and discovery, questioning whether healing and religious devotion have to be at odds…So, do they?

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DoubleBlind Digs

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