Abstract

Currently, heavy metals pollution has become one of the highly concerned worldwide environmental issues due to their harmful effects. Rapid industrialization, urbanization, and various natural processes have led to the increased release of these toxic heavy metals into the soil and water that causes serious threat to the ecosystem and human health. Hence, there is a greater need for remediation of contaminated soils and water with suitable approaches and mechanisms for sustainable environmental restoration of soils and water from heavy metal pollution. The conventional methods of physical or chemical remediation procedures involve the physical removal of contaminants, and their disposition are expensive, non-specific and often make the soil unsuitable for agriculture and other uses by disturbing the microenvironment. To overcome these problems, there has been increased attention in eco-friendly and sustainable approaches such as bioremediation for the cleanup of contaminated sites. Bioremediation is the use of natural and recombinant microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi, and plants for the cleanup of environmental toxic pollutants. They help in detoxification and degradation of toxic pollutants either through intracellular accumulation or via enzymatic transformation to lesser or completely non-toxic compounds. This review mainly focuses on the bacterial bioremediation for cleaning-up toxic heavy metals from polluted soils.

Keywords: Heavy metals; Pollution; Soil; Bioremediation; Bacteria