ABSTRACT
Worldwide, there is an increasing trend in areas of land, surface waters, and groundwater aected by contamination from industrial, military, and agricultural activities, either due to ignorance, lack of vision, or shared carelessness. e build-up of toxic pollutants including metals, radionuclides, and organic contaminants in soil, surface water, and groundwater, not only aects natural resources but also causes a major strain in the ecosystems [44]. e necessity to conserve natural resources including land and water underpins the need to develop and apply alternative, environmentally sound technologies (ESTS). It is against this backdrop that the process of phytoremediation emerged. Phytoremediation is the direct use of living green plants for in situ, or in place, removal, degradation, or containment of contaminants in soils, sludges, sediments, surface water, and groundwater. It is a low cost, solar energy driven cleanup technique has been found to be very useful for treating a wide variety of environmental contaminants particularly with shallow and low levels of contamination [30,37,38]. Phytoremediation has been found eective in conjunction with mechanical cleanup methods and in some cases is preferable over the latter [5].
