Bioaccumulation of heavy metals and emerging contaminants by macrophytes and their potentiality in the wastewater treatment in constructed wetlands

CARLOS A. HARGUINTEGUY; DANIELA S. ARÁN; FACUNDO L. CORTÉS; MAGDALENA V., MONFERRAN

Bruselas

Congreso; EnScience 2023: 2nd Global Summit on Environmental Science and Applications; 2023

The Scientistt

Environmental protection has become a global problem, anthropogenic activities have led to thegeneration of greater negative impacts on the environment, causing pollution to affect people’shealth and environmental deterioration. Industrialization has systematically contributed to increasingemissions of heavy metals and emerging contaminants, with the consequent deterioration of theenvironmental quality.The heavy metals and emerging contaminants concentrations in surface waters and sediments andtheir relationship with the accumulation and physiological changes in aquatic plants in areas withanthropogenic impact were evaluated. Different macrophytes revealed high capacity to accumulatethose contaminants in their tissues, from contaminated water bodies. Thus, the manifestation ofphysiological changes demonstrated the importance in monitoring studies in aquatic environmentswith consequences of ecological risk.However, the high accumulation levels of contaminants in tissue observed in some plants andthe physiological tolerance, which revealed the potentiality for use in remediation systems withcontaminated water and sediment. The exposure in constructed wetlands, simulating an aquaticenvironment contaminated with wastewater discharges, allows the evaluation of levels ofbioconcentration, translocation and removal efficiency in these systems.