The soil's composition, structure, and nutrients have altered throughout time. These changes are natural and anthropogenic. Economic, environmental, and social benefits, including ecosystem services, come from restoring degraded land and exploiting marginal land. Most physiochemical remedies for damaged land are difficult, costly, and time-consuming. Nano-remediation and nano-restoration are novel, efficient, cost-effective, eco-friendly, and dependable for toxin remediation and risk reduction. The high surface area/volume ratio, increased reactivity, customizable physical qualities, and adaptability of nanoscale entities make them attractive for soil remediation. Different nanomaterials (NMs) and nanotools can clean up pollutants. Both foreign chemicals and polluted location affect these methods. Decontaminating soil contaminants with nanoscale entities reduces their detrimental effects on humans, plants, and animals. It also discusses nanoparticles (NPs) and ex- and in-situ cleanup. The authors discuss nanoscale item uses in soil remediation and land restoration in this chapter.
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Soil is heavily affected by environmental pollution and can be described as a widespread problem. The presence of hazardous compounds in soil leads to soil pollution, which in turn disrupts the biological, chemical, and physical soil characteristics. This ultimately results in negative alterations to soil fertility and the ecosystem (Rajput et al., 2021).
Soil pollution is a significant worldwide issue; the soil's quality has deteriorated due to the human actions: waste disposal, mining, emissions from foundries and electronic industries, and the use of wastewater or sludge for irrigation, lead to the introduction of organic contaminants, like pesticides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PACs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), inorganic contaminants, including heavy metals (HMs) and metalloids, as well as a wide range of other impurities, are frequently found in soil (Ganie et al., 2021; Vardumyan et al., 2024). Because they are resistant to chemical and biological breakdown, organic contaminants and inorganic ions accumulate in soil over time, where they cause harm (Ganie et al., 2021). HMs, particularly when present in high concentrations, can disrupt various physiological processes in organisms. This includes modifying enzyme specificity, impairing cell function, and causing damage to the membrane of cell and DNA structure (Fajardo et al., 2020). An assessment of the mobility and bioavailability of these contaminants can provide insights into their harmful impacts. Therefore, in order to decrease their harmfulness, it is imperative to decrease their accessibility to plants and other organisms. Immobilization is a practice that can successfully decrease the toxicity of metals in the soil. It does this by introducing a likely agent to the soil via ion exchange, adsorption, or precipitation, so reducing the amount of bioavailable and mobile fraction of these contaminants (Ganie et al., 2021).
Various methods, both ex-situ and in-situ, have been utilized for soil remediation over the past few years (Ghazaryan et al., 2018). These methods include vitrification, solidification, photocatalysis, extraction, and biological technologies. These approaches differ in their efficacy, expense, time consumption, and potential for secondary contamination when applied in the field. Presently, there is a growing fascination in the utilization of NMs due to its novel technique in rehabilitating soils that have been damaged by HMs (Fajardo et al., 2020).
Although significant efforts have been made to reduce the impacts of human activities, the need for environmental cleanup still remains and must be diminished. Given this perspective, nano-remediation is gaining more and more interest as an innovative technique that might completely transform the approach to handling and resolving dangerous waste and environmental pollution, while also having the ability to tackle environmental issues (Arsenov et al., 2023). Extensive study investigates the unique features of NMs. Consequently, they demonstrate extensive capacity and present multiple opportunities in various industries (Arsenov et al., 2023).
Extensive research is now being conducted to develop and construct effective and dependable methods to break down or convert environmental toxins that are of concern. The utilization of NMs in environmental remediation has gathered substantial interest owed to their distinct impute: cost-effectiveness, sensitivity, exceptional electrical capabilities, high surface / volume ratio, and superior catalytic activities (Ganie et al., 2021).
Although NPs possess evident benefits, they are not immune to certain drawbacks, among which are potential hazards to human and environmental health, ease of aggregation, susceptibility to geochemical changes, and a propensity for quick passivation (A. Singh et al., 2022; Zhu et al., 2019). At now, there is a lack of knowledge and evidence about the hazards linked to the negative impacts of NPs on native microbial populations and ecosystem function at different stages of the cleanup process (Marcon et al., 2021). Due to a lack of understanding, cautious and protective regulatory measures have been put in place (Bardos et al., 2018).