Effective removal of heavy metals and dyes from drinking water utilizing bio-compatible magnetic nanoparticle

Abstract

Heavy metal contamination in environment is being resulted mainly from natural weathering processes and anthropogenic activities. Freshwater chromium (Cr) concentrations are dependent on soil chromium levels in the surrounding watershed areas. Extensive industrial usage of chromium leads to generation of large volumes of chromium-containing wastes that are discharged into the environment. Chromium has been known to be extremely toxic at low concentration (Waalkes et al. 1992; Bruins et al. 2000), although they have no significant biological function so far reported. Malachite Green (MG) has effective application as an anti-fungal, anti-microbial and anti-parasitic agent in food industry (Afkhami et al. 2010) but the chemical causes toxic effects to human cells with mutagenic and carcinogenic properties as well.