Exposure to heavy metals such as lead, zinc, cadmium, copper, and selenite creates serious risks to human health by disrupting essential cellular components. Contamination in soils threatens ecosystems and human safety through polluted groundwater, direct ingestion, food chain transmission, and reduced food quality. Bioremediation offers an approach to cleanse polluted environments by using micro-organisms or microbial enzymes to transform toxic metals into less harmful forms. However, microbial bioremediation also faces practical constraints, such as the generation of toxic metabolites during the process. Microbes manage heavy metal exposure through specific resistance mechanisms. These defences include pumping metal ions out via cellular efflux, biosorption onto cell walls, entrapment within extracellular capsules, precipitation, and the chemical reduction of metal ions to less toxic states.
Heavy metal contamination in soil directly affects food safety, drinking water security, and public health. By outlining how micro-organisms resist and neutralise these contaminants, this work clarifies biological pathways that could help restore contaminated land. It also highlights the technical challenges, such as toxic secondary metabolites, that must be addressed to ensure biological clean-up methods are safe and effective.
The described mechanisms could inform the design of biological treatment processes for environmental remediation contractors, mining operators, and industrial waste-management organisations. However, the abstract describes general biological mechanisms and limitations without presenting specific strains, performance data, or field trials. Consequently, the work represents early-stage research that requires substantial applied development and safety validation before practical deployment in commercial remediation.
AI-generated from the published abstract. Always read the original work before citing.
Exposure to lead (Pb), zinc (Zn), cadmium (Cd), copper (Cu), and selenite (SeO3−2) consider the main heavy metals that threat human health. These heavy metals can interfere with the function of vital cellular components. Soil heavy metal contamination represents risks to humans and the ecosystem through drinking of contaminated groundwater, direct ingestion or the food chain, and reduction in food quality. Bioremediation means cleanup of polluted environment via transformation of toxic heavy metals into less toxic form by microbes or its enzymes. Otherwise, bioremediation by microbes has limitations like production of toxic metabolites. The efflux of metal ions outside the cell, biosorption to the cell walls and entrapment in extracellular capsules, precipitation, and reduction of the heavy metal ions to a less toxic state are mechanisms to metals’ resistance.
This page summarises published work. The authoritative version sits with the publisher.
DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.88339
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