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| The sunflower was used by 19th century American settlers to treat colds, asthma, sore throats, bronchitis, whooping cough, and tuberculosis. They also planted sunflowers near their homes to ward off malaria. This might have been helpful because the sunflower can soak up great quantities of water, and mosquitoes live and breed in wet areas. The sunflower is an important source of vegetable cooking oil, ranking second among all seed crops in the world. Sunflowers can remove toxic waste from the environment. It can absorb toxic metals such as arsenic, zinc, lead, uranium and strontium-90. They have long roots which reach deeply into polluted water and extract toxic metals. After the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, floating rafts of sunflowers with their roots dragging in the radioactive water were able to extract 95% of the radioactivity caused by the accident. |
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