Phytoremediation-A Green Technology for Sustainable Management of Heavy Metals

Rapid urbanisation and industrialisation has led to broad dispersal of pollutants especially heavy metals in the environment. Beyond critical limit, heavy metals are hazardous for the growth as they harm metabolic activities of organisms. Natural and anthropogenic inputs add heavy metals in the ecosystem. Heavy metal mobilisation induced by anthropogenic activities like processing for varied applications as well as their extraction from the ores has led to their liberation into the environment. They are non-biodegradable and persist in the soil for longer time, thus contaminate the food chain. Exposure to heavy metals in humans especially children have posed number of behavioural, neurological, carcinogenic and even mutagenic disruptions. Hence, due attention is required for remediation of metal contaminated systems. Conventional treatment processes for removal are costlier, labour intensive, disturb the rhizospheric microflora and certainly not eco-friendly. Phytoremediation is one such green technology and is the active areas of current research. It is a non-conventional technique employed to alleviate the toxic effect of metal contaminants. Number of effective metal hyperaccumulators has been exploited in remediation of contaminated ecosystems. This paper comprehensively focuses on the heavy metal sources, toxicity and strategies involved in their remediation.