Bioremediation of Environmental Pollutants

Abstract

This chapter describes how pollutants are increasing in the environment due to the rapid industrialization all over the world. The environment has been contaminated with large number of organic and inorganic pollutants. The organic pollutants are largely anthropogenic and are introduced to the environment in many ways. Soil contamination with toxic metals, such as Cd, Pb, Cr, Zn, Ni, etc., as a result of worldwide industrialization has increased noticeably within the past few years. Bioremediation is a process for reclaiming the environment which has been polluted with the help of living forms. It is an option that offers the possibility to destroy various contaminants using natural biological activity and to degrade the environmental contaminants into less toxic forms. It is also applicable for the heavy metal hazards. It has proven to be cheap and efficient than other techniques. This chapter focuses on the possible trends in the remediation of environment pollutants with the help of plants as well as microbes.