Bryophytes as an Accumulator of Toxic Elements from the Environment: Recent Advances

Abstract

Toxic elements cause a serious threat to both the terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. They are released into the environment by anthropogenic activities like the discharge of wastewaters viz. industrial effluents, home sewage, use of chemical fertilizers, burning of fossil fuel, mining of different ores, use of radioactive elements, and nuclear reactors which contribute to heavy metal influx into the environment. Bryophytes include liverworts, hornworts, and mosses which have a significant potential to absorb heavy metals, making them useful biomonitoring tools. Because of the lack of an efficient vascular system, heavy metals deposition has been seen in bryophytes. Bryophyte tissue is a potent ion exchanger with the environment; hence, they accumulate heavy metals from the sources. Metalcontaminated streams. Mosses are the most important of the three groups of bryophytes in terms of bioaccumulation of hazardous substances from the environment. Moss species are more effective than vascular plant leaves for monitoring air pollution produced by heavy metals in urban areas. Hence, bryophytes are regarded as the best biomonitoring agent of environmental pollution. Currently, Moss bag techniques have been used to give a low-cost, flexible, and dense monitoring design that can show spatial and temporal trends but also vertical and horizontal gradients for a number of inorganic and organic pollutants. The moss bag approach will successfully overcome the issue of a lack of naturally grown mosses, allowing homogeneous biomonitoring of gaseous pollutants across all anthropogenically devastated areas. It has been utilized successfully for biomonitoring of potentially hazardous elements such as rare earth elements and persistent organic chemicals, primarily polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. In this context, a more in-depth research is necessary from the forthcoming researchers in this field.