7.

6 Bioremediation

Large areas of the earth have already been contaminated with oil-derived compounds and toxic chemicals.
From the soils to the seas, nothing has escaped. An estimate of 2 million tons of oil enter the sea every
year.

Half from industrial effluents, sewage and river outflows

Remainder from non-tanker shipping and natural seepage from the sea floor

18% coming from artificial (refineries, offshore operation, and tanker activities)

Oil most seen and emotive subject on tv

Low toxicity but deadly effect on birds and animal life (sea life)

Maintaing marine and coastal ecosystems = reduing oil pollution and environmental impact

Contamination of soil = range of anthropogenic activities (caused by human activities)

Substances, sufficient quantities or concentrations, cause harm to humans and to the environment

Xenobiotic (industrially derived) compounds = high levels of recalcitrance and subject to biomagnification
(stubborn or difficult to remove) (increase in the concentration of a chemical substance)

DDT = passed through the food chain;

Ppm = trophic level increases, amount of toxicity build up also increases.

Three reasons:

Persistence – substance cannot be broken down by environmental processes

Food chain energetics - substance's concentration increases progressively as it moves up a food chain

Low rate of internal degradation – water-insolubility

Hazardous wastes and chemicals = major problems of modern society

USA = excess of 50,000 contaminatd sites and several hundred thousand leaking underground storage
tanks

China = 980 m of 1.3 billion drink water that is partly polluted, 600m drink with human or animal waste,
and 20 million rely on well water that is contaminated with high levels of radiation

Yangtze river dolphin and softshell turtle all extinct because of human activities.

Ph = pasig river, once thriving and nakakaligo pa now dead because of human activities. fecal matter
mercury cadmium lead found in fish na kinakain ng tao

Biotech = protect and fight hazardous wastes

Biological cataylsts to degrade, detoxify, or accumulate contaminating chemicals

Biological agents, microorganisms, treatment of enviro chemicals = treatment of remedial activities.

Three main approaches in dealing with contaminated sites

1. identification – what happened

2. assessment of the nature and degree of the hazard – determine the severity of the damage

3. choice of remedial action – determine what to do or use to solve the issue

Contaminated soil

On site processing

Physical and chemical methods of separation and/removal of pollutants

Bioremediation – optimize the environmental conditions = microbial degradation can occur rapidly and as
completely as possible

Microbes – present in the soil and water = biological transformation of xenobiotic compounds

Not introducing something that isn’t already in the ecosystem; already occurring within it

Population = dynamic equilibrium; can be altered by changing environmental conditions such as nutrient
availability

Not individual strains but rather a bunch of them will act on the pollutant molecules

May or may not have a good effect; little is known about the individual microogranisms involved

Bioremediation application in two ways:

1. promotion of microbial growth = addition of nutrients (biostimulation)

Indigineous microbes when exposed to the pollutants for a long period of time, the subpopulations develop
a limited metabolic activity and degrade the offending pollutant.

2.removing microbial samples from the polluted site, enrich the useful microbes, and re introduce them
into the contaminated site (bioaugmentation)

Companies have been marketing microbes that can increase the rate of biodegradation of oil pollutants.