Table Of ContentEmerging Contaminants and Associated Treatment Technologies
Tariq Aftab Editor
Emerging
Contaminants
and Plants
Interactions, Adaptations and
Remediation Technologies
Emerging Contaminants and Associated
Treatment Technologies
Series Editors
Muhammad Zaffar Hashmi, Department of Chemistry, COMSATS University,
Islamabad, Pakistan
Vladimir Strezov, Department of Environmental Sciences, Macquarie University,
Sydney, NSW, Australia
Emerging Contaminants and Associated Treatment Technologies focuses on
contaminant matrices (air, land, water, soil, sediment), the nature of pollutants
(emerging, well-known, persistent, e-waste, nanomaterials, etc.), health effects
(e.g., toxicology, occupational health, infectious diseases, cancer), treatment
technologies (bioremediation, sustainable waste management, low cost
technologies), and issues related to economic development and policy. The book
series includes current, comprehensive texts on critical national and regional
environmental issues of emerging contaminants useful to scientists in academia,
industry, planners, policy makers and governments from diverse disciplines. The
knowledge captured in this series will assist in understanding, maintaining and
improving the biosphere in which we live. The scope of the series includes
monographs, professional books and graduate textbooks, edited volumes and books
devoted to supporting education on environmental pollution at the graduate and
post-graduate levels.
Tariq Aftab
Editor
Emerging Contaminants
and Plants
Interactions, Adaptations and Remediation
Technologies
Editor
Tariq Aftab
Department of Botany
Aligarh Muslim University
Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India
ISSN 2524-6402 ISSN 2524-6410 (electronic)
Emerging Contaminants and Associated Treatment Technologies
ISBN 978-3-031-22268-9 ISBN 978-3-031-22269-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22269-6
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Preface
The “emerging contaminants” (ECs) are predominantly unregulated anthropogenic
chemicals that occur in air, soil, water, food, and plant/animal tissues in trace con-
centrations. The ECs are persistent in the environment, capable of perturbing the
physiology of target receptors and, therefore, are regarded as contaminants of
emerging environmental concerns in recent years. The prominent classes of ECs
include pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PCPs), surfactants, microplas-
tics, pesticides, fire retardants, and nanomaterials. If released into the environment,
these contaminants may enter the food chain. Emerging contaminants influence the
physiological cell reactions at different levels and lead to altering in normal cell
function primarily at the molecular and biochemical level. Molecular responses to
such ECs have been studied over the last few years, in which there is an intricate
network of signaling pathways controlling perception of these environmental stress
signals, the generation of second messengers, and signal transduction. Recent
advances in many areas of plant and microbial research, including genotyping,
make scientists optimistic that valuable solutions will be found to allow deploy-
ment/commercialization of strategies better able to tolerate these ECs.
ECs may also be created in the agricultural environment itself. Many man-made
substances that enter agricultural systems will be degraded by chemical, physical,
and biological processes. While these reactions may result in the complete break-
down of a chemical (i.e., they convert the chemical to carbon dioxide, water, and
methane), in many instances the processes may result in the formation of stable
intermediate chemicals which we call degradation or transformation products.
Many ECs are also produced naturally by fungi, bacteria, algae, plants, and animals.
According to their origin, these toxins are usually separated into the categories:
mycotoxins (fungal origin), bacterial toxins (bacterial origin), phycotoxins (algal
origin), phytotoxins (plant origin), and zootoxins (animal origin). These are usually
produced by the organisms as a defense mechanism. The ECs where agriculture is
currently the predominant source of surface water contamination, compared to non-
agricultural sources, are the natural toxins, veterinary medicines, hormones, and
transformation products of man-made chemicals used in agriculture. For some ECs,
agriculture might be an important source of contamination in the future. For
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vi Preface
example, if pesticides are developed in the nano-form in the future, it is likely that
these materials will be transported to and contaminate surface waters. For some
ECs, for example, bioterrorism/sabotage agents, the importance of agriculture as a
source of contamination is difficult to predict.
Environmental remediation was historically viewed as an inherently sustainable
activity, as it restores contamination; however, researchers and practitioners are
increasingly recognizing that there can be substantial environmental footprints and
socioeconomic costs associated with remediation. Sustainability is an imperative in
the emerging green and sustainable remediation movement, which is reshaping the
entire remediation industry. The book comprises diverse chapters accumulating the
significant roles of ECs in affecting plants and environment, and the need of sustain-
able or eco-friendly approaches in mitigating these ECs
Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India Tariq Aftab
Contents
1 An Insight Into the Consequences of Emerging Contaminants
in Soil and Water and Plant Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Masina Sairam, Sagar Maitra, Subhashisa Praharaj, Suprava Nath,
Tanmoy Shankar, Upasana Sahoo, D. T. Santosh, Lalichetti Sagar,
Monalisha Panda, G. Shanthi Priya, T. R. Ashwini,
Dinkar J. Gaikwad, Akbar Hossain, Biswajit Pramanick,
Hanuman Singh Jatav, Harun I. Gitari, and Tariq Aftab
2 Impact of Emerging Metal-Based NPs on Plants and Their Influence
on the Phytotoxicity of Other Pollutants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
María Dolores Fernández and Concepción García-Gómez
3 Potential Toxic Effects of Metal or Metallic Nanoparticles
in Plants and Their Detoxification Mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Zaid Ulhassan, Su Yang, Ali Raza Khan, Yasir Hamid,
Sajid Muhammad, Wardah Azhar, Abdul Salam,
Mohamed Salah Sheteiwy, Tariq Aftab, Ji An Wei, and Weijun Zhou
4 Non-standard Physiological Endpoints to Evaluate the Toxicity
of Emerging Contaminants in Aquatic Plants: A Case Study
on the Exposure of Lemna minor L. and Spirodela polyrhiza
(L.) Schleid. to Dimethyl Phthalate (DMP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Fabrizio Pietrini, Laura Passatore, Serena Carloni,
and Massimo Zacchini
5 Pesticides: Impacts on Agriculture Productivity, Environment,
and Management Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Bilal Ahmad Khan, Muhammad Athar Nadeem, Humaira Nawaz,
Muhammad Mohsin Amin, Ghulam Hassan Abbasi,
Muhammad Nadeem, Muhammad Ali, Muhammad Ameen,
Muhammad Mansoor Javaid, Rizwan Maqbool, Muhammad Ikram,
and Muhammad Ashar Ayub
vii
viii Contents
6 Occurrence, Distribution, and Fate of Emerging Persistent Organic
Pollutants (POPs) in the Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Lubna Najam and Tanveer Alam
7 Phyco-remediation: Role of Microalgae in Remediation of Emerging
Contaminants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Saket Jha, Rohit Shukla, Ravikant Singh, Mohee Shukla, Piush
Srivastava, Anand Pandey, and Anupam Dikshit
8 Contamination of Sewage Water with Active Pharmaceutical
Ingredients: An Emerging Threat to Food Products and Human
Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Sadia Sultana, Muhammad Sabir, Saif Ullah, Hamaad Raza Ahmad,
and Ghulam Murtaza
9 Physiological and Molecular Mechanism of Nanoparticles Induced
Tolerance in Plants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Asad Azeem, Nasir Abbas, Sonia Azeem, Zafar Iqbal,
and Sami Ul-Allah
10 Arsenic and Cadmium Toxicity in Plants: Mitigation and Remediation
Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Gouranga Upadhyaya, Subhankar Mondal,
and Aryadeep Roychoudhury
11 Remediation of Persistent Organic Pollutants Using Advanced
Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
Amtul Bari Tabinda, Rimsha Javed, Abdullah Yasar,
Adeel Mahmood, and Rizwan Rasheed
12 Multiple Adaptation Strategies of Plants to Mitigate the Phytotoxic
Effects of Diverse Pesticides and Herbicides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
Samrat Banerjee, Mehali Mitra, Pinaki Roy, Sreyashi Nandi,
and Sujit Roy
13 Carbon-Based Hybrid Materials for Remediation Technology . . . . . 333
Neetu Talreja, Divya Chauhan, and Mohammad Ashfaq
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
About the Editor
Tariq Aftab received his PhD from the Department of
Botany at Aligarh Muslim University, India, and is cur-
rently an assistant professor there. He is the recipient of
a prestigious Leibniz-DAAD fellowship from Germany,
Raman Fellowship from the Government of India, and
Young Scientist Awards from the State Government of
Uttar Pradesh (India) and Government of India. After
completing his doctorate, he worked as a research fel-
low at the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources,
New Delhi, and as a postdoctoral fellow at Jamia
Hamdard, New Delhi, India. Dr. Aftab also worked as a
visiting scientist at Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics
and Crop Plant Research (IPK), Gatersleben, Germany,
and in the Department of Plant Biology, Michigan State
University, USA. He is a member of various scientific
associations in India and abroad.Tariq has edited 15
books with international publishers, including Elsevier
Inc., Springer Nature, and CRC Press (Taylor & Francis
Group), co-authored several book chapters, and pub-
lished more than 80 research papers in peer-reviewed
international journals. His research interests include
physiological, proteomic, and molecular studies on
medicinal and crop plants .
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