Reducing Heavy Metal's Pollution Caused by Industrial Effluents, Factory Effluents, Biotechnological Approaches, Microbes

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	Reducing Heavy Metal’s Pollution Caused by Industrial Effluents The waste effluents of several modern industries also contain heavy metals like mercury, lead and cadmium, which cause poisoning. For instance, mercury cause poisoning, which attacks the nervous system of patients. Lead causes mental retardation of children. The use of lead free petrol is one measure to check this pollution, but these heavy metals are also removed, before these effluents are discharged to natural land or waters.
The property of some species of bacteria and algae, to extract metals from their surrounding, has been utilized to purify industrial effluents. Biotechnological approaches are recommended, where metal extracting forms (mainly algae) can be grown in ponds, where factory effluents (rich in heavy metals) are discharged. The microbes will extract the heavy metals and sequester them inside their cell-membranes. The metal can be subsequently recovered from these microbes. This subject is described as phytoremediation.