Safer bioremediation for contaminated soil

Microorganisms can provide a sustainable way of breaking down contaminants in the soil, but they can create toxic by-products in the process. An EU-funded project is looking at how to manage the risks associated with bioremediation.

Scientists know plenty about how microbes can break down major soil pollutants Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons or PAHs, but what happens with other contaminants, including oxygenated PAHs (oxy-PAHs) or Nitrogen-containing PAHs (N-PAHs), is often overlooked. Another uncertainty is whether the action of the microbes may end up increasing the overall toxicity of the soil by creating new transformation products. These are reasons why current biorestoration technologies are still not effective enough at cleaning up contaminated soils.

The Spanish-run project NETPAC aims to identify the microbial communities relevant for these neglected polycyclic aromatic compounds or PACs and find new, more sustainable ways of using them to restore PAH-impacted soils.

Bioremediation — a technique which involves using organisms to remove or neutralise pollutants — began to be used in the 1960s. There has been growing interest in the method in recent years as European countries look for more environmentally-friendly ways of cleaning up contaminated sites. But regulation of this technique is, in most countries, still based on a list of 16 compounds drawn up by the US Environmental Protection Agency back in the 1970s.

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Safer bioremediation for contaminated soil