ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to convey the risk levels of major inorganic pollutants (heavy metals or potentially toxic elements) to human lives. The mobilization of these potentially toxic elements (PTEs) through numerous anthropogenic activities have badly contaminated the environment. Since these PTEs are nonbiodegradable, they are accumulated into the human food chain and results in negative effects on human health. This phenomenon exerts some serious environmental health implications with concerns on the agricultural produce and quality as well as health of organisms living in the environment. Some pollutants are mutagenic, endocrine disruptors, carcinogenic, and teratogenic, while some trigger neurological changes in organism’s behavior. 40Because of their negative effects, due consideration is also required for the remediation of PTE-contaminated sites. Many limitations such as higher initial costs, expensive labor, resource modification, and disturbance in native soil microflora are the negative points while using various available chemical and physical methods for this purpose. Phytoremediation (use of plants species for chemical removal from contaminated sites) is a cheaper, economical, and safe approach to be practiced in PTE-contaminated soils when compared with physical and chemical methods of remediation. This chapter allows readers to get cost-effective ideas about the remediation of PTEs removal. This chapter also discusses the occurrence of PTEs, their sources, and their removal techniques with future recommendations.
