The festival of ‘Holi’ is proving to be an environmental risk due to the toxic colors used during the celebrations. Unlimited and uncontrolled use of such dyes can lead to grave consequences in terms of human health and ecological balance. These colors are highly structured polymers and are very difficult to decompose biologically. This study was taken up with an initiative to determine the extent of effects that the ‘Holi’ colors have on water and soil, respectively. The bacteria inhabiting these contaminated water and soil samples were isolated for biochemical analyses.

As human activity in the Arctic increases, so does the risk of hydrocarbon pollution events. On site bioremediation of contaminated soil is the only feasible clean up solution in these remote areas, but degradation rates vary widely between bioremediation treatments. Most previous studies have focused on the feasibility of on site clean-up and very little attention has been given to the microbial and functional communities involved and their ecology.

Greenhouse pot culture studies were conducted to evaluate the bioremediation potential of spinach for removal of cadmium. The results indicated that spinach was able to take up cadmium in substantial quantity in the shoot. There were no visual cadmium toxicity effects on spinach and no significant reduction in the dry matter yield up to 20 μg g–1 cadmium. Significant growth retardation of fenugreek crop grown after spinach was observed at all the levels of cadmium, with no cadmium uptake in the shoot.

Contamination of aquatic resources by a variety of heavy metals is of growing concern because of health risk posed by the exposure to flora and fauna as well as human being. The vast majority of toxic metals are the waste products/by products of industrial and metallurgical processes. Other possible sources include the effluent from electroplating, storage battery manufacturing industries, tanneries, municipal sludges, extractive metallurgy processes, and metal finishing operations contains high amount of dissolved metals and the concentration reaches to a significant range.

Minerals  are  the  gift  of  nature  which  occurs  either  in  thick  forest  areas  or  adjacent  to  it.