ABSTRACT
The role of biodegradation as a process technology for use in decontamination of hazardous pollutants is clearly accelerating as texts such as Refs. 1-4 attest. New uses of microbial populations are being found every day. The strong interest in biotechnology processes for waste cleanup stems from a combination of economic, national health, and other environmental driving forces. It is evident that congressional limits on financial resources dictate that the most cost-effective processes be employed to ameliorate contaminated sediments and soils that threaten population health or key environmental habitats. For example, the movement of hazardous wastes through surface and subsurface soils, if not alleviated, could result in significant poisoning of potable water aquifers and discharge of hazardous contaminants into navigable streams and rivers and result in contamination of edible fish and shellfish that are native to these waters. The estimated cost of decontaminating soils containing hazardous mixed wastes using currently approved technologies is in the range of many billions of dollars. These technologies focus on processes that include thermal destruction, solidification, and encapsulation.
