Environmental implications of coal mining and its sustainable mitigation by Phytoremediation: A comprehensive review.
Singh AK, Choudhary JK, Polavarapu MP, Shukla SK, Singh A
Phytoremediation
PubMedLand and water around coal mines often contaminate food, drinking water, and ecosystems that communities depend on — and plants may be our most practical, affordable tool for healing that damage at scale.
Coal mining leaves behind seriously polluted land and water that can harm people and wildlife for decades. Scientists reviewed five years of research and found that certain plants are remarkably good at pulling toxic heavy metals out of soil and water — essentially acting as living vacuum cleaners. Even better, combining these cleanup plants with helpful soil bacteria, charcoal-like additives, or genetic tweaks can make the process significantly faster and more effective.
Key Findings
Conventional cleanup methods like topsoil replacement and water spraying are limited in effectiveness, site-specific, and costly — making plant-based remediation an increasingly attractive alternative.
Different plant functional groups (grasses, shrubs, trees, aquatic plants) play distinct roles in stabilizing, extracting, or breaking down heavy metals and other mining contaminants in soil and water.
Emerging enhancements — including microbe-assisted growth, biochar integration, nano-scale materials, and genetic improvement of plants — can significantly boost phytoremediation performance at real-world field scale.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Coal mining devastates air, soil, and water quality across mining regions worldwide. This review finds that using plants to clean up contaminated land — a method called phytoremediation — offers a cost-effective, sustainable alternative to conventional cleanup methods, especially when combined with modern techniques like microbes, biochar, and genetic improvements.
Abstract Preview
Coal mining activities are widely recognised for their adverse impacts on air quality, soil integrity, water resources, and ecosystem health, posing significant environmental and public health chal...
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