review · Environment International
Potentially toxic elements in soils pose serious threats to environmental quality and human health, driving the need for effective remediation techniques. Earthworms can modify and improve soil health while enhancing plant productivity, making them promising agents for vermiremediation either alone or alongside other soil amendments and organisms. Evaluating their suitability involves examining how these organisms survive in contaminated soils, how toxic elements affect their populations, and the factors that influence element accumulation and elimination. Earthworms also alter the dynamics and environmental fate of these contaminants. While technical feasibility shows potential for bio-restoration, significant practical challenges and knowledge gaps remain around controlling contaminant bioavailability, highlighting areas that require focused development before broad field application.
Contaminated soils introduce hazardous substances into food chains and surrounding ecosystems, creating urgent risks for human health. Understanding biological soil restoration methods offers a route to rehabilitate degraded land naturally, relying on living organisms to stabilise or reduce toxins rather than using disruptive chemical or mechanical treatments.
This work informs the design of biological soil remediation services aimed at land rehabilitation and environmental management. Potential end users include environmental remediation contractors, agricultural land managers, and regulatory bodies seeking ecological remediation methods. The abstract indicates the research is at an early to intermediate stage, outlining technical feasibility and practical knowledge gaps that must be addressed before developing standardized, market-ready solutions for controlling contaminant bioavailability.
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Global concerns towards potentially toxic elements (PTEs) are steadily increasing due to the significant threats that PTEs pose to human health and environmental quality. This calls for immediate, effective and efficient remediation solutions. Earthworms, the 'ecosystem engineers', can modify and improve soil health and enhance plant productivity. Recently, considerable attention has been paid to the potential of earthworms, alone or combined with other soil organisms and/or soil amendments, to remediate PTEs contaminated soils. However, the use of earthworms in the remediation of PTEs contaminated soil (i.e., vermiremediation) has not been thoroughly reviewed to date. Therefore, this review discusses and provides comprehensive insights into the suitability of earthworms as potential candidates for bioremediation of PTEs contaminated soils and mitigating environmental and human health risks. Specifically, we reviewed and discussed: i) the occurrence and abundance of earthworms in PTEs contaminated soils; ii) the influence of PTEs on earthworm communities in contaminated soils; iii) factors affecting earthworm PTEs accumulation and elimination, and iv) the dynamics and fate of PTEs in earthworm amended soils. The technical feasibility, knowledge gaps, and practical challenges have been worked out and critically discussed. Therefore, this review could provide a reference and guidance for bio-restoration of PTEs contaminated soils and shall also help developing innovative and applicable solutions for controlling PTEs bioavailability for the remediation of contaminated soils and the mitigation of the environment and human risks.
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DOI: 10.1016/j.envint.2021.106924
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