Soil contamination is a widespread environmental and toxicological concern all over the world. An environmentally friendly approach to remediate such soils involves the combination of using plants and various amendment application to these soils to limit the mobility of contaminants (e.g., metals such arsenic, cadmium, lead or zinc) and prevent their dissemination.

Nanotechnology and Nanoremediation

Nanotechnology is useful as an environmental technology and is operated under the name of nanoremediation. This is used to protect the environment, either through prevention, treatment or cleaning up hazardous waste sites. Nanoremediation methods are based on nanomaterials reagents for transformation and detoxification of pollutants, providing a wide range of novel amendments for the immobilization of metal/metalloids in the soil. Their size results in high reactivity and stabilization efficiency, having received much attention due to their excellent superparamagnetic properties, great biocompatibility, their relatively-high specific surface area and important sorption properties. However, the impacts of nanoparticles on the environment must be intensively studied before their full implementation._

Project Objectives

The behavior and potential toxicity for plants has not been yet described. It is assumed that the processes are very complex and the nanoparticles can affect the soil/plant system and vice versa. For this purpose, the main objective of the project is to assess the environmental risks of MNMs as immobilisation amendments for metal/metalloids in contaminated soils during phytostabilisation through their interactions with contaminants in the rhizosphere-plant system and their implications for plant physiology. Real contaminated soils will be used for laboratory and glasshouse as well as field experiments with plants._

Project Focus and Research

This project will be focused on the behavior of MNMs particularly in the rhizosphere, their dispersivity from the application zone to others, their reactivity and persistence, and solubility and availability for live organisms. At the same time, the project will help to detect the toxicity mechanisms for plants, especially at root level since it supposes the first point of contact and translocation of MNMs from the soil to the rest of trophic chain. The project includes the modelling of the results for the prediction of the reactivity and dispersivity of MNMs from the soil to the plants, as well as the possible long-term transient flow and dissemination of MNMs-metals as a function of time._

Significance and Benefits

Once these issues have been resolved, it will be much easier for the rest of the scientific community to extrapolate the research to higher and more concrete levels. The proposed research has the potential to provide a very significant benefit to the society, evaluating the impacts and safety of the novel MNMs application to metal-contaminated soils.