Phytoremediation-A Miracle Technique for Waste Water Treatment

Waste water treatment is a vital component in any community, without which water borne disease pathogens can spread resulting in diseases. Moreover, water cannot be recycled to fulfil the requirement of growing population. Thus, this treatment is necessary to protect the human beings as well as aquatic living organisms from harmful diseases such as cholera, typhoid, etc. Different techniques have been applied for waste water treatment mainly activated sludge, induced gas flotation, ultraviolet disinfection and supercritical water oxidation (SCWO). These techniques are cumbersome, time consuming and expensive. Thus, phytoremediation can be potent alternative of these techniques. Phytotremediation is a solar energy assisted clean up technique. Moreover, this technique has more ecologically advantageous as compared to other techniques. The present paper describes the morphology, mechanism, phytochemistry of certain plants that are mainly used for waste water treatment such as Scirpus species, Vetiver zizanioides, Eleocharis ochrostachys, Typha species, Pistia stratiotes, Lemma gibba, Phragmites communis, Hydrilla verticullata, Gracillaria gracilis, Ipomoea aquatic and Azolla pinnata. These plants readily facilitate absorption of nutrients that are in excess in addition to toxic elements such as lead, iron, copper, cadmium and mercury. The objective of the review is to sum up the literature of existing plants which was not used earlier for phytoremediation of waste water and to provide a baseline for new research alongside their usage in environmental clean up especially near pharmaceutical industries.