Eco-friendly approach for environment pollution: a review on bioremediation

Rapid industrial development has led to the recognition and increasing understanding of the interrelationship between pollution, public health, and the environment. Industrial development results in the generation of industrial effluents, and if untreated results in water, sediment and soil pollution. The indiscriminate release of heavy metals into the environment is a major concern worldwide, as they cannot be broken down to non-toxic forms and therefore have long-lasting effects on the environment. Many of them are toxic even at very low concentrations; arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel, selenium, silver, zinc etc. are not only cytotoxic but also carcinogenic and mutagenic in nature. Bioremediation is an effective process over the chemical methods also it is eco-friendly and low-cost as compared with other methods. The relief of organic and inorganic pollutants in the environment cause many problems to the soil, aquatic systems and consequently affects the human health. Therefore, it is necessary to find out unambiguous strains of microorganism which are proficient of biodegradation or detoxification of such pollutants from the environment. In the bioremediation process, bacteria alone, consortia, or combination of bacteria, fungi, and plants can be used for effective biodegradation. Microbes could be isolated from almost all types of environmental conditions and also have a wide range of adaptability. To survive under a stressed condition, bacteria had evolved several types of mechanisms to tolerate the uptake of contaminants. In general, the immobilization and mobilization are the two main techniques used for the bioremediation of contaminants mainly heavy metals by microbes.