Microbial monitoring and degradation of lindane in soil
type: CreativeWork
description: Lindane (γ-hexachlorocyclohexane, γ-HCH), once the most applied insecticide worldwide, is still considered a serious threat to the environment, due to its persistence in soil and water and to its potential to bioaccumulate in the food chain. Other ubiquitous HCH-isomers, formed as waste products during the production of lindane, also pose a major environmental threat. Because of the widespread pollution by lindane (and other HCH-isomers), there is a need for risk assessment tools to monitor its environmental impact. Monitoring of polluted sites is as yet often restricted to the quantification of the contaminant by means of chemical analyses. In soil the use of microorganisms as indicator tools in monitoring procedures offers many opportunities, because of their ability to respond and rapidly adapt to changes in environmental conditions. As yet, removal of lindane from the environmental compartments has attained the highest priority. A possible approach is bioremediation, the process by which living organisms degrade the contaminant. A technology often used in bioremediation is bioaugmentation, in which specialized microorganisms are introduced into the environment in order to metabolize the targeted compound. Despite its long-term use in bioremediation, bioaugmentation of contaminated sites with microbial cells continues to be a source of controversy within environmental microbiology. This largely results from its notoriously unreliable performance record. In a first part of this research, the applicability of methane oxidation, an important soil function performed by methanotrophic bacteria, was evaluated as a microbial indicator for the monitoring of HCH pollution. The effect of HCH on both the activity and the structure of the methanotrophic community was assessed, using methane oxidation assays and PCR-DGGE (polymerase chain reaction – denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis) respectively. Methane oxidation assays with historically polluted soils revealed that i…
abstract: Lindane (γ-hexachlorocyclohexane, γ-HCH), once the most applied insecticide worldwide, is still considered a serious threat to the environment, due to its persistence in soil and water and to its potential to bioaccumulate in the food chain. Other ubiquitous HCH-isomers, formed as waste products during the production of lindane, also pose a major environmental threat. Because of the widespread pollution by lindane (and other HCH-isomers), there is a need for risk assessment tools to monitor its environmental impact. Monitoring of polluted sites is as yet often restricted to the quantification of the contaminant by means of chemical analyses. In soil the use of microorganisms as indicator tools in monitoring procedures offers many opportunities, because of their ability to respond and rapidly adapt to changes in environmental conditions. As yet, removal of lindane from the environmental compartments has attained the highest priority. A possible approach is bioremediation, the process by which living organisms degrade the contaminant. A technology often used in bioremediation is bioaugmentation, in which specialized microorganisms are introduced into the environment in order to metabolize the targeted compound. Despite its long-term use in bioremediation, bioaugmentation of contaminated sites with microbial cells continues to be a source of controversy within environmental microbiology. This largely results from its notoriously unreliable performance record. In a first part of this research, the applicability of methane oxidation, an important soil function performed by methanotrophic bacteria, was evaluated as a microbial indicator for the monitoring of HCH pollution. The effect of HCH on both the activity and the structure of the methanotrophic community was assessed, using methane oxidation assays and PCR-DGGE (polymerase chain reaction – denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis) respectively. Methane oxidation assays with historically polluted soils revealed that i…
author: Mertens, Birgit
language: eng
keywords: Earth and Environmental Sciences
date published: 2006
date modified: 2026-07-24T02:23:05Z
provider: Ghent University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Ghent University. Faculty of Bioscience Engineering

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-470126