Phytoremediation of Environmental Pollutants: An Eco-Sustainable Green Technology to Environmental Management

Phytoremediation of Heavy Metal-Contaminated Sites: Eco-environmental Concerns, Field Studies, Sustainability Issues, and Future Prospects

“…Phytoremediation has been identified as an emerging, lowcost and eco-sustainable solution for HM pollution prevention and control. It is the most suitable alternative to conventional physicochemical remediation technologies, which are highly expensive, technically more suited to small areas, create secondary pollution and deteriorate soil fertility and thus, adversely affects agro-ecosystem (Ali et al 2013;Chandra et al 2015;Mahar et al 2016;Muthusaravanan et al 2018).…”

“…Phytoremediation is the engineered use of green plants with associated soil beneficial microbes to remove toxic pollutants via degradation and detoxification mechanisms from contaminated soil and water/wastewaters (Bharagava et al 2017a;Mukhopadhyay and Maiti 2010;Ali et al 2013). It is an eco-friendly, non-intrusive and aesthetically pleasing remediation technology that removes metal pollutants from the contaminated sites (Lee 2013;Chandra et al 2015;Chirakkara et al 2016). It can be commercialized and income can be generated, if metals removed from contaminated sites could be used to extract usable form of economically viable metals (i.e.…”

“…It can be commercialized and income can be generated, if metals removed from contaminated sites could be used to extract usable form of economically viable metals (i.e. phytomining) (Chandra et al 2015;Mahar et al 2016). In addition, energy can be generated through the burning of plant biomass and land restoration could be achieved for sustainable agricultural development or general habitation (Stephenson and Black 2014;Mahar et al 2016).…”

Phytoremediation: A Sustainable Approach for Restoration of Metal Contaminated Sites

“…About 500 plant species have metal hyperaccumulation characteristic, among these approximately 0.2 % belong to angiosperm [9]. The ideal plants for phytoremediation should have the ability to accumulate high metal content, tolerate high salt concentration, having fast growth rate, higher biomass production, easily harvestable and must translocate metals to their above ground parts efficiently [6]. For selecting model plant species for phytoremediation, the ratio of metals between soil and plant parts (metal transfer factor) is measured and this ratio should be more than one.…”

“…It is also an in situ remediation technology that uses the inherent potentials of plants to remove the toxic heavy metals such as Cd, Cr, Ni, Hg and As etc. from contaminated soils [5][6][7]. In developing countries, treated and untreated waste water is commonly used for the irrigation of agricultural land.…”