Bioremediation of Xenobiotics-contaminated Sites: Concept and Selected Case Studies

Abstract

Amongst the knowledge-based technologies, biotechnology is a frontier technology, which has the potential to provide substantial benefits to society in a wide range of sectors such as agriculture, medical and health, forestry, animal husbandry, environment protection, and improving the quality of products and services. Industrialization in developing countries is causing considerable environmental damage, as the conventional responses of end-of- pipe pollution controls are inefficient and expensive. The social and economic costs of environmental damage caused by the prevailing industrial growth in India have been estimated to be much higher than the required expenditure of 0.5-1.0 percent of GNP for pollution control. The clean up of xenobiotics and anthropogenic contaminants, which are introduced in the environment following rapid industrialization, is one of the environment related problems currently being encountered globally. The least cost clean-up technology involving bioremediation originates in environmental biotechnology, which warrants interdisciplinary approach involving such disciplines as environmental and chemical engineering, earth sciences, chemistry, toxicology, ecology, microbiology and biochemistry. In addition, the demographic compulsions and declining per capita natural resources necessitate the developing countries to optimize land and water use and restore environmental quality but, at the same