heavy metals Archives

Phytoremediation: Using native vegetation to stabilise heavy metal contaminants at polluted sites

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Madeleine Günthardt-Goerg and Pierre Vollenweider are researching how the properties of trees can be used to develop sustainable management strategies to phyto-stabilise contamination at metal-polluted sites through phytoremediation.

Elevated concentrations of heavy metals at polluted sites represent serious human health hazards and environmental threats. Persistent metal pollution is hard to remedy but one possible and effective method is phytoremediation, using plants to stabilise the metal pollution and ameliorate the contaminated soil properties. Across 20 years of research, Drs Madeleine Günthardt-Goerg and Pierre Vollenweider of the Swiss Federal Institute […]

Green cleaning of heavy metals in water

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Researchers are investigating the possibility of using plant compounds to clean up heavy-metal pollution in South Africa, using compounds of flavonoids to remove metal ions from polluted water

Many anthropogenic activities have resulted in pollution of water with heavy metals, and pose a huge health risk for humans and animals. Some plants, however, can extract and accumulate these metals from soil and water without any toxic effects. Plant flavonoids are compounds that have the chemical ability to bind to heavy metals. Recent work by Dr Robert Luckay and […]

Monitoring toxic pollutants for better air quality

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Industrial combustion releases flue gas into the air.

Air quality is imperative for our and the environment’s health. Research around air quality has been focusing on the monitoring, testing, and investigation of toxic pollutants, such as heavy metals, polychlorinated and polycyclic aromatic compounds, or particulate matter (PM2.5). Professor Guo-Ping Chang-Chien, director of the Super Micro Mass Research and Technology Center at Cheng Shiu University of Science and Technology […]

Soil and groundwater contamination: An old and new issue needs to be solved

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Industrial and agricultural waste contaminate the soil and groundwater.

Dr Ming Zhang is an innovation coordinator at Geological Survey of Japan, AIST. Alongside his research group, he is advocating the importance of using interdisciplinary tools for sustainable remediation of contaminated soil and groundwater. Their research has shown that cost-effective and environment-friendly technologies such as the use of microorganisms to degrade organic contaminants and the use of minerals to immobilise […]