"Most people are worried about CO2 escaping from below and coming up," Yousif Kharaka of the United States Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., said. "If it does, it's going to bring all kinds of things with it." As part of the Department of Energy-funded Zero Emissions Research Technology (ZERT) project, Kharaka and colleagues injected 660 pounds of CO2 per day into shallow groundwater in Montana. Iron, manganese, calcium and magnesium concentrations all skyrocketed, as did several other contaminants. Kharaka's study sent dissolved CO2 content soaring to between 50 and 60 times its natural level, far higher than anything MacPherson's team has seen. And she admits that because of the complex role plants play in drawing CO2 out of the atmosphere and injecting it into the soils, she's still unsure whether the atmosphere is the direct cause of the increase. "But if I'm right, and the increase is linked to the atmosphere, we should see this signal in other places, too," she said. "I think this is an interesting twist," Kharaka said of MacPherson's study. "There is no doubt that with higher CO2 in the atmosphere, it's going to get into the water. The question is how much of the minerals will dissolve, and how much of an impact it will have at the low levels talked about here."
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