Heavy metals - Arsenic

Rapid industrialization led to severe pollution which deteriorated the quality of the environment. Due to industrialization heavy metal pollution becomes a serious risk to the diversity of life. Heavy metals are responsible for contamination in the environment. Several environment techniques are being used to clean up the environment from these kinds of contaminants. Currently, phytoremediation is an effective and affordable technology that is used to extract metal pollutants from contaminated soil. The present paper aims to assess phytoremediation capacity of local plants and contents of heavy metals in soils of industrial areas of Bikaner city. Plants such as Citrullus colocynthis, Brachiaria ramosa, Cucumis lanatus, Calotropis procera, Cucumis prophetarum, Abutilon indicum, Aerva pseudotomentosa, and Prosopis juliflora are taken for the current study. These plants are evaluated for the removal efficiencies of As, Cd, Co, Cu, Cr, Fe, Mn, Ni, Pb, and Zn metals from soils. Most of the metals like As, Cd, Cu, Pb, Co, Cr, Fe, Mn, Zn and Ni are absorbed by Aerva pseudotomentosa, Citrullus colocynthis and Cucumis lanatus. Which shows that these plants are good metal accumulators and they could be utilized for metal remediation of contaminated soil.