ABSTRACT
Heavy metals, pesticides and antibiotics derived from various sources viz. anthropogenic and agricultural activities ultimately reach to the soil, water and other ecosystems. These pollutants pose a great threat to the environment. Indiscriminate use of pesticides and antibiotics lead to the accumulation of parental compounds and their metabolites ultimately leading to the contamination of soil and water environments. All these compounds mainly affect the non-target organisms and responsible for cause of various complications in humans, animals, microorganisms and their biological activities. In view of the hazardous effects posed by these pollutants an effective bioremediation strategy is most demanding. Although literature survey reveals that, physical, chemical and biological methods are in practice, potential bioremedial methods not yet explored, particularly, when groups/mixtures of organic compounds/heavy metals are accumulated in the environment. Specifically, nowadays antibiotics are the utmost demanding chemicals substances to treat numerous bacterial, viral and fungal diseases in humans and animals throughout the world. These consumed antibiotics ultimately reach to the aquatic environments and affects aquatic animals and other non-target microorganisms. Repeated/continuous exposure of pathogenic microorganisms to antibiotics in the environment, they develop resistant to these antibiotics. Therefore, in this chapter, we accumulated all the data, that could be useful to find out potential bioremedial methods to decontaminate the pollutants, such as heavy metals, pesticides and antibiotics from the environment.
