Agro-Pollutants and their Nano-Remediation from Soil and Water: A Mini-Review

Abstract

The human activities may include the agricultural, industrial and other activities. The agricultural sector is considered the main source for our life’s supplies. Thus,the agriculturalactivities or practices might result many pollutants such as applied mineral fertilizers, pesticides, effluents from domestic and industrial sewages and vehicular emissions.Therefore, a remediation to remove or decrease the pollutants in soil and water is needed for the environmental protection. This remediation has several classic strategies several years ago, but a promising and new approaches have been established particularly nano-remediation. This nano-remediation depends on the applied nanomaterials in removing pollutants from soils and water through nano-bioremediation and nano-phytoremediation. The most important nanomaterials that have the potential in removing pollutants from contaminated soils and water nano-silica, nano-zero-valent of iron, nano-sized ironsulfide particles, nano-ZnO and others. However, many challenges or open questions are still needing a justification because using of nanomaterials in higher concentrations are considered toxic to plants and agro-environment. Are these nanomaterials stable under environmental conditions or will be converted into toxic ones or still need to be identified for sustainablenano-remediation? Is there any possibility to enter the nanomaterials or other toxic compounds the food chain through these plants? Therefore, a lot of further questions and further research are needed concerning the nano-remediation in removal the agro-pollutants.