Coupled Electro-kinetic Remediation and Phytoremediation of Metal(loid) Contaminated Soils

Soil contamination with heavy metals and metalloids has become a serious environmental problem with rapid industrialization and urbanization [1-3]. Generally, the contamination is resulted from anthropogenic activities such as mining, domestic waste discharge, agricultural production and industrial activities. Heavy metals and metalloids such as Cd, Pb, Cr, Cu, Hg, Cs, Se, Zn and As enter the food chain and have adverse effects on human health [1-3]. As the increasing concern on the environmental risk, numerous remediation technologies have been developed while very few methods had been proved to be efficient for cleaning up of heavy metal(loid)s due to their characteristics of persistence and non-degradation in contaminated sites [1,4-10].