Studying the Effectiveness of Phytoremediation in the Purification of Soils Contaminated with Heavy Metals

Waste chemicals cause soil pollution and increase concerns about the environment. Among these waste materials, heavy metals have significant physiological effects on living organisms due to their indestructibility. Due to the lack of decomposition of heavy metals in the environment, there is a need to remove them from the environment. Considering the very high costs of physical and chemical methods, efforts are being made to introduce and use cheaper methods. In this study, an attempt has been made to introduce a new method using the potential of plants to remove soil pollution. The most obvious disadvantages of this method are the following: limited to sites with low and medium pollution, shallow roots, low biomass production, low bioavailability of metals in the soil (especially calcareous and young soils) in dry areas and Semi-dry, and time-consuming. According to the results obtained from various studies, the following are suitable solutions to overcome these problems: choosing suitable species, using bacteria resistant to heavy metals and stimulating plant growth, strengthening the root system, more biomass production, and increasing the bioavailability of metals by plants. The use of microbial inoculation helps plant species to efficiently remove heavy metals from the soil. The application of the phytoremediation technique has been less used so far and due to the ignorance and carelessness of some people, it has never been used as an effective method in the purification of heavy metals in contaminated soils. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce and replace plants and apply new strategies based on the investigation of the cooperation of plant-microbial communities.