Occurrence and potential harms of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) in environment and their removal by periphyton

Abstract

Organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) have been widely used around the world due to their high-efficiency and broad-spectrum insecticidal effects. However, they pose a severe threat to ecosystems and human health due to their easy bioaccumulation and high toxicity. Periphyton is ubiquitous in the submerged substrates surface. It plays a crucial role in carbon, nutrients elements cycling and contaminants transformation in environment. Periphyton can remove OCPs through bioadsorption, bioaccumulation and biodegradation, which alters the fate of OCPs in environment. This review presents a comprehensive summary of OCPs occurrence, global cycle, potential harm in environment, and their removal by periphyton. The OCPs residual have been detected frequently in different environmental medias such as water, soil, atmosphere, sediment, and organisms. Their harm is depending on their physicochemical properties and the exposure route. The main compositions and functions of periphyton have been summarized. Moreover, the artificial cultivation methods of periphyton in laboratory and in-situ field are compared. In addition, the mechanisms of periphyton-mediated OCPs removal and the main factors impacting OCPs removal are also discussed. Periphyton could self-regulate its biological communities to adapt to the OCPs and environment, and then regenerate new species to degrade OCPs. Finally, the prospect of OCPs removal by periphyton and future studies are also proposed. This review provides a systematic introduction on current knowledge of OCPs occurrence, cycle, potential harm in environment, and their removal by periphyton.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Periphyton
• organochlorine pesticides
• biodegradation
• algae
• microorganisms

Handling Editors:

• Chang-Ping Yu and Lena Q. Ma

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the NSFC Project of International Cooperation and Exchange (No. 41961144010), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 22136003, 42007020 and 21972073), and the 111 Project (D20015). Moreover, we would like to thank MJEditor (www.mjeditor.com) for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript.