Environmental Protection: Critical Perspectives in Science and Literature

By Dr. Mallesh Reddy, Dr. Sanjay N. Shende and Dr. Premila Swamy D.

The present book investigates various dimensions of environmental protection and degradation. It contain original and review research articles from science as well as literature fields. Broadly speaking it covers the areas like environmental degradation, issues of pollution, geo-environmental predicament, Eco criticism and environmental consciousness in English literature.
The main purpose of the book is to investigate present predicament of environmental degradation and to discuss the possible solutions in a scientific way for the protection of environment. At present the books available on the topic of environmental protection does not cover all the dimensions and most of them are particular path oriented like resources on biodiversity, pollution, etc. the present book fulfils this lacuna and explores environment from various perspectives in a scientific way. The book also discusses reflection of environmental consciousness in literature.
Since environmental degradation and protection is a multi-layered phenomenon, this book will be helpful to the teachers, students and researchers who wish to understand various dimensions of the environmental issues with possible scientific solutions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: tredition
• Release date: Mar 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9783347271173

Book preview

INDEX – Science Section

INDEX – Literature Section

GREEN TECHNOLOGY TO REMOVE HEAVY METALS: MECHANISMS, METHODS AND ENHANCEMENTS

Debashree Borthakur

Research Scholar Assam Don Bosco University

Guwahati, Assam Email: [e-mail]

Abstract

Pollutants like heavy metals, industrial waste, plastic and certain agricultural effluents affect and contaminate surface water, ground water and soil. Such increasing accumulation of toxic pollutants impacts the quality of environment and also causes stress on ecosystem. In order to solve this environmental contamination, a plantbased technology called phyto-remediation or green technology can be engaged. Phyto-remediation is based on several processes such as phyto-degradation, phytovolatilization, phyto-sequestration, rhizo-remediation, phytoaccumulation and phyto-extraction. These methods can be used for improving the quality of polluted soil and water. These green technologies offer cheap, environment friendly and simple alternatives against other conservative approaches. The present paper reviews different methods and mechanisms involved in phyto-remediation for heavy metals, and also focus on enhancement of phyto-remediation process.

Keywords: Pollutants, Phyto-remediation, Phyto-degradation, Phyto-volatilization, Phytosequestration, Rhizo-remediation, Phyto-accumulation, Phyto-extraction.

Introduction

Implementation of economic and environment friendly technologies to detoxify highly contaminated land is the main approach towards betterment of ecosystem. Greener alternatives offer economic and ecosystem rich process to remediate heavy metal, radionuclide and industrial wastes (Wu et.al., 2017). This approach can be called as ‘green remediation’ or ‘phyto-remediation’, which also includes various disciplines of plant physiology, soil chemistry, and microbiology for the cleaning up the contaminated soil and air (Sheoran et.al., 2011). Plant interactions with soil micro-biota can increase the efficiency of plants towards detoxification (Schiavon et.al., 2013; Gupta and Gupta 2017). Hence, to understand the efficiency of phytoremediation, it’s a prerequisite to have the basic knowledge of the underlying rhizosphere interactions, degradation, extraction, volatilization, physiochemical and molecular mechanisms which regulate pollutant uptake, translocation, chelation, availability of contaminants etc. (Razzaq 2017). Entry of highly poisonous metals such as lead, mercury, arsenic, copper, zinc and cadmium into the biological system causes disturbance in metabolic functions (Misraand Gedamu1989; Pan et.al., 1994; Garty2001; Bañuelos et.al., 2015; Sharma et.al., 2015). Metal pollutants are highly toxic and become threat to humans and aquatic life (Rashed 2003; Etim2012). Hence, remediation of heavy metals from contaminated sites has received a crucial role (Alqadamiet.et.al., 2017a; Bushra et.al., 2017; Daneshvar et.al., 2017;Kumar et.al., 2017; Naushad et.al., 2017). There is a high need of technologies to remediate pollutants from the environment (Sivarajasekar2007, 2014). Phyto-remediation is a cleanup technology for metal contaminated soils, specifically