Biodegradation of micropollutants

Micropollutants are the pollutant fragments less than 5mm in diameter. They enter the ecosystem from different resources such as clothing, cosmetics, packaging products, and various industrial processes. The utilization of clothing, packaging, personal care, and pharmaceutical products is associated with the improved quality of life; however, their resulting wastes are widely contaminating ecosystem. For the removal of such environmental pollutants, different remediation techniques have been reported for the removal of environmental micropollutants including nanoremediation, photocatalysis, bioremediation, and sonochemical catalysis techniques. Few of these techniques require the usage of high energy excessive amount of chemicals resulting the formation of toxic byproducts. Several microorganisms have been reported for efficient biodegradation of variety of different organic, inorganic, and other environmental pollutants. Microbial engineering has introduced opportunities to develop efficient microbes for pollution remediation processes. This chapter provides details of various techniques employed to remove micropollutants from the environment under various conditions. Recent advances in bioremediation technologies, their advantages, drawback, applications, and future perspectives have also been comprehensively discussed on different biotechnological methods.