COMPARISON OF COPPER AND COBALT RESISTANCE OF MICRORGANISMS ISOLATED FROM COAL MINING ENVIRONMENTS OF NEYVELI
Makkena Sree Lekha and *Dr. V. Judia Harriet Sumathy
Abstract
Heavy metals are highly persistent pollutants in the environment.These metals are used in various industries from which effluents areconsequently discharged into the environment. Metals usuallyaccumulate at higher concentration in the soil than in water because itis diluted in soil than in water easily. Soils are composed of mineralswhich can naturally contain high concentrations of metals. Capacity ofsoils will allow metals to attach to soil particles in response to ionicattractions and accumulate. Several biotic and abiotic factors caninfluence the specification and toxicity of metals in the soil. Thesefactors interact to influence metal speciation, bioavailability andoverall toxicity. Thus, it must be emphasized that determination of thetotal concentration of a metal in a soil is not enough to predict toxicity in biological systems.Most of the research on metal bioavailability has been done in soil because of understandingthe rate of metal in soil and sediment and also used to determine the effect of metals on thebiota, metal leaching to ground water and metal transfer up the food chain. Theenvironmental hazards posed by metals are directly linked to their concentrations in the soilsolution. High concentrations in the soil solution results in uptake of many plants, wheremetals that are retained in the soil phase shows a great reduced environmental hazard. Theconventional methods used for the removal of heavy metals in contaminated effluent includeselectrochemical treatment, ion exchange, evaporation, chemical precipitation, reverseosmosis and sorption, however all these physical and chemical methods were observed tohave technical and economical constrains like high cost of operation and release of chemicaland huge sludge to the environment as by-product. Therefore the need to replace them with cost effective and environmental friendly biological method of treatments is the need of the hour.
Keywords: Heavy metals, Environment, Hazard, Research and Biological Treatment Method.
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