Bacterial remediation to control pollution

Contaminated sites, namely environmental troubles, have generally resulted in the past and arise nowadays from the manufacturing, storage, use, and disposal of hazardous chemicals and materials. It is now widely recognized that polluted sites pose dangers to human health and the environment. Many conventional and sustainable remediation techniques have been invented to destroy dangerous organic pollutants. Bioremediation represents a perspective and a potential technique for treating polluted environments that involve using microorganisms and/or plants for pollutant biodegradation or biotransformation. The technology can be performed as natural attenuation or employed as a supported process of bioremediation like biostimulation, bioaugmentation, biofiltration, bioventing, and biosorption. Successful soil bioaugmentation can be achieved by applying individual bacterial strain or a bacterial consortium with the required degradation ability and the ability of microorganisms to survive under adverse environmental conditions. It has been observed that active bacterial communities in the soil, when exposed to pollutants, not only become resistant but also develop degradation mechanisms. Studies have confirmed that airborne bacteria can prove good candidates for future applications in biomonitoring and bioremediation. Bioremediation is a technique for removing/converting harmful contaminants like heavy metals into less harmful substances and/or removing toxic elements from the contaminated environment through metal-microbe interactions that have both beneficial and harmful consequences. Removal of pollutants with the help of bacterial chemotaxis will also prove helpful in bioremediation applications. This chapter deals with the use of different strains of the bacterial population in the remediation of various pollutants.