{"id":11853,"date":"2015-09-05T07:11:02","date_gmt":"2015-09-05T12:11:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11853"},"modified":"2015-09-05T07:11:02","modified_gmt":"2015-09-05T12:11:02","slug":"cleaning-the-earth-natures-way-phytoremediation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11853","title":{"rendered":"Cleaning the Earth Nature&#8217;s Way &#8211; Phytoremediation."},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/ergobalance.blogspot.co.uk\/2015\/09\/cleaning-earth-natures-way.html\" target=\"_blank\">Cleaning the Earth Nature&#8217;s Way &#8211; Phytoremediation.<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>Phytoremediation<sup>1,2<\/sup>\u00a0may be defined as the treatment of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Natural_environment\">environmental<\/a>\u00a0problems by using plants\u00a0<em>in situ<\/em>\u00a0so to avoid the need to excavate the contaminant material for disposal elsewhere. It<sup>\u00a0<\/sup>can be applied to the amelioration of contaminated\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Soil\">soils<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Water\">water<\/a>, or\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Air\">air<\/a>, using plants that can contain, degrade, or eliminate\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Metal\">metals<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pesticide\">pesticides<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Solvent\">solvents<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Explosive\">explosives<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Crude_oil\">crude oil<\/a>\u00a0and its derivatives (refined fuels), and related contaminating materials. Phytoremediation has been used successfully for the restoration of abandoned metal-mine workings, and cleaning up sites where\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Polychlorinated_biphenyls\">polychlorinated biphenyls<\/a>\u00a0have been dumped during manufacture, and for the mitigation of on-going coal mine discharges. Phytoremediation uses the natural ability of particular plants (\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hyperaccumulator\">hyperaccumulators<\/a>\u201d, described below) to bioaccumulate, degrade, or otherwise reduce the environmental impact of contaminants in soils, water, or air. Those contaminants that have been successfully mitigated in phytoremediation projects worldwide are metals, pesticides, solvents, explosives, and crude oil and its derivatives, and the technology has become increasingly popular and has been employed at sites with soils contaminated with lead, uranium, and arsenic. A major disadvantage of phytoremediation is that it takes a relatively long time to achieve, because the process rests upon the ability of a plant to thrive in an environment that is not normally ideal for plants.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Advantages and limitations of phytoremediation.<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Advantages<\/strong>:\n<ul>\n<li>In terms of cost, phytoremediation is lower than that of traditional processes both\u00a0<em>in situ<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>ex situ.<\/em><\/li>\n<li>The plants can be easily monitored.<\/li>\n<li>There is the possibility of the recovery and re-use of valuable metals (by companies specializing in \u201cphyto-mining\u201d).<\/li>\n<li>It is potentially the least harmful method because it uses naturally occurring organisms and preserves the environment in a more natural state.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cleaning the Earth Nature&#8217;s Way &#8211; Phytoremediation. Phytoremediation1,2\u00a0may be defined as the treatment of\u00a0environmental\u00a0problems by using plants\u00a0in situ\u00a0so to avoid the need to excavate the contaminant material for disposal elsewhere. It\u00a0can be applied to the amelioration of contaminated\u00a0soils,\u00a0water, or\u00a0air, using plants that can contain, degrade, or eliminate\u00a0metals,\u00a0pesticides,\u00a0solvents,\u00a0explosives,\u00a0crude oil\u00a0and its derivatives (refined fuels), and related contaminating [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6752,4137,8604,8712,8713],"class_list":["post-11853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-contaminants","tag-contamination","tag-energy-balance","tag-phytoremediation","tag-plants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11854,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11853\/revisions\/11854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}