Abstract

Heavy metals are among the most important sorts of contaminant in the environment. Several methods were already used to clean up the environment from these kinds of contaminants, but most of them are costly and difficult to get optimum results. Of all the remediation techniques available for metal-contaminated soil, phytoremediation is the most cost-effective, environmentally friendly and practical approach. Phytoremediation includes the removal, relocation, or reduction of contaminants using plants that hyperaccumulate these contaminants. Phytoremediation is an emerging technology using selected plants to clean up the contaminated environment from hazardous contaminant to improve the environment quality. Mechanisms used to remediate soils contaminated by heavy metal are: phytoextraction, phytostabilization, phytovolatilization and rhizofiltration. In this review, we discuss the need for phytoremediation and its approaches with a special context to the heavy metals.