Impact of Heavy Metal Contamination on Quality Environs

Abstract

Heavy metals (HMs) pose serious threats to soil structure, animals, and plants. The progression in industrialization and technological support put immense load on the quality environs. The anthropogenic stress on quality environs by way of releasing huge quantities of HMs decreases the life span of quality environs significantly. There are multiple sources of releasing HMs in quality environs, which include natural as well as anthropogenic sources. However anthropogenic sources have alone added manifolds of toxic HMs into the quality environs. The presence of these substances in the ecosystems causes serious trouble to life dependent on quality ecosystems. HMs contamination in any ecosystem not only affects the life process of animals, but critically damages the life processes of plants and microbes. Various authors have evaluated the ill effects of HMs on plants, humans, and microorganism and concluded that these substances have deleterious impacts on any biota. Therefore, this chapter expresses the work published on the theme of ecotoxicity of HMs on different biota on earth.