Facing Lethal Impacts of Industrialization via Green and Sustainable Microbial Removal of Hazardous Pollutants and Nanobioremediation

Abstract

Industrialization exert a negative impact to the surrounding environment by causing pollution to soil, air, and water supplies in addition to its hazardous effect on human health because of the generated toxic by-products. Environment became polluted with heavy metals, pathogenic microorganisms, toxic industrial effluents, pharmaceutical compounds, and dyestuffs. Currently, several strategies have been employed for the removal of these hazardous substances involving physical and chemical technologies. Yet, these technologies have high operation costs as well as high consumption of energy and chemicals. Hence, development of green, low-cost, and sustainable treatment procedures is the need of the hour. Employing biological entities such as fungal, bacterial, and algal isolates is an interesting bioremediation approach which has proved its high efficacy. This bio-process is affected by diverse biotic and abiotic parameters. This chapter reviews the most prevailing treatment methodologies employed for removing heavy metals and other contaminants such as physical, chemical, physiochemical, and biological methodologies. It mainly focuses on bioremediation, its mechanism, and the employment of nanotechnology in bioremediation as an emerging strategy to reduce the hazardous effects of toxic pollutants.