Phytoremediation was developed for many reasons, which are all somehow related - the contamination of water, soil, and air, and the need to cleanse it. Out of necessity to clean up the Earth, the idea of using the planet's best - and simplest - weapon against degradation surfaced, thanks to Dr. Ilya Raskin, a Russian scientist (Arnold; Hazuka; Herring; Murray; Williamson, N/A).
Water
Water containing toxic waste - or other hazardous materials - is placed into a manmade wetland near a planting site. The water gets into the groundwater beneath the plants, polluting it - if it isn't already polluted - and the roots from the plants above it can then take in the water. As the water is taken into the roots of the plant, so are the pollutants. However, as the plant performs its natural processes of evaporating the water, the pollutants are broken down and retained within the plant. The sunlight breaks down the rest of the pollutants into harmless materials, 1,4-dioxane into methane and carbon dioxide (Stevens Systems).
Soil
Contaminated soils are always a big problem when it comes to planting, as most plants cannot grow. However, there are a few plants that can reverse this process - leading to more phytoremediation use. One such plant, the Alpine Pennycress, is used when soils are contaminated with excess traces of zinc and cadmium. The Alpine Pennycress absorbs the zinc and cadmium from the soil and retains it so that not only is the soil no longer contaminated, but the metals can be later extracted from the plant and be put to other uses - in other words, it's two birds with one stone (ARS/USDA, 2004).
Air
When the air is contaminated, we have another big problem. We don't want to breathe in pollutants, which can make us sick, right? So phytoremediation can solve this problem, too. Plants naturally take in the gases from the air and cleanse our atmosphere. So when they are planted in mass quantities, more of the gases we can't breathe, or that make us sick, are absorbed. (Storch, 2001).
