ABSTRACT
Being one of the most vital components of terrestrial ecosystem, soil regulates bio-geochemical cycles, water cycles, pollutant detoxification, ecosystem restoration, biodiversity maintenance, etc. However, the current 21st century is marked with serious environmental problems including soil contamination and degradation. This soil health crisis will certainly pose major challenges to agricultural productivity and food security in the coming near future. One of the important factors contributing directly to soil degradation is the huge loading and deposition of potentially toxic heavy metals (HMs) in the soil. The soil system acts as sink for these HMs derived from excessive usage of pesticides, fertilizers, sewage, and sludge, industrial effluents, air, etc. In this regard, nanotechnology could be applied as a cleaner, affordable, and an easily available novel technology that could also deliver sufficient results without jeopardizing the environment. Therefore, engineered nanomaterials are being increasingly used to clean up such pollutants with long persistence period. Currently, most of the engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) acts on HMs and reduce the mobility and toxicity of the HMs through a process called “immobilization.” The mode of mechanism of these engineered nanomaterials is different from each other and could be exploited based on the type of target HMs and prevailing soil conditions. However, the potential short and long-term risks of nanomaterial application to soil must be assessed through their possible behavior in the soil system, fate, and migration of additives 120and interactions with other agricultural management practices. The anthropogenic introduction of huge-amount of nanomaterials in the environment might bring unexpected risks to the human as well as the soil health, if these nanoscale particles end up polluting the natural ecosystems and threatening the native biodiversity.
