Hazardous organic and metallic residues or by-products can enter into plants, soils, and sediments from processes associated with domestic, municipal, agricultural, industrial, and military activities. Handling, ingestion, application to land or other distributions of the contaminated materials into the environment might render harm to humans, livestock, wildlife, crops, or native plants. Consi...

The term bioremediation covers a wide variety of engineered systems which utilize microorganisms to degrade, detoxify and immobilize organic contaminants. These systems include: l solid-phase treatment using unlined iand treatment systems or prepared bed bioreactors, l slurry-phase treatment systems completed either in-place or within tanks or impoundments, and l in situ treatment systems. Bior...

Microbes are susceptible to contaminant effects, and high concentrations of chemical in soil can impact on microbial growth, density, viability and development. As a result of relative sensitivity of microbes to contaminants, toxicity data are important in determining critical loads or safe levels for contaminants in soil. Therefore the aim of this study was to assess the impact of phenanthrene...

Polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are emitted from a variety of sources and can accumulate on and within surface soil layers. To investigate the level of potential risk posed by surface contaminated soils, vertical soil column experiments were conducted to assess the mobility, when leached with simulated rainwater, of six selected PAHs (naphthalene, phenanthrene, fluoranthene, pyrene, benzo(e)py...

the influence of long-term mixed organic and inorganic contamination on soil microbial activity, community structure and genetic diversity was investigated in soil samples from a coke oven plant located in upper silesia, poland. the tested soils were heavily contaminated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (pahs) and heavy metals. the microbial communities were characterized using the phospho...

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) are byproducts of combustion and are ubiquitous in the urban environment. They are also present in industrial chemical wastes, such as coal tar, petroleum refinery sludges, waste oils and fuels, and wood-treating residues. Thus, PAHs are chemicals of concern at many waste sites. Risk assessment methods will yield riskbased cleanup levels for PAHs that rang...

In a previous study, we have shown that spectroscopic models based on visible and nearinfrared (vis-NIR) spectroscopy (350–2500 nm) predicts polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in tropical rainforest soils with reasonable accuracy. In this study, we used these models to develop soil maps of PAHs and total toxicity equivalent soil concentrations (TTEC) of the PAH mixture. We used the soil ma...

We evaluated the ability of As-hyperaccumulator Pteris vittata (PV) to remove As from As-contaminated soils over five harvests in 2.5 years in raised beds (162 kg soil/bed). We tested the hypothesis that a P-limiting environment would enhance PV growth and As uptake owing its unique ability to uptake P under As-rich environment. In Dec. 2009, PV was transplanted to three As-contaminated soils (...