The Way Ahead - Environmental Biotechnology: Theory and Application - page 273

any intervention or structured response. Local authorities and, increasingly, com-
mercial operations, are commonly faced with the need to make hard decisions
regarding their waste management provision. The inherent flexibility and intrinsic
pollution mitigation offered by engineered biotreatment, as opposed to disposal
and consequent incidental biodegradation, remains a major influential factor in
this respect.
Pollution Control
The future of pollution control and minimisation is, clearly, highly interdependent
on the forthcoming activities within the preceding two intervention zones. With
cleaner production techniques in the offing and more comprehensive biological
treatment of the waste produced, not to mention the economic, legal and pub-
lic relations constraints operative, de novo contamination should be very largely
reduced. The clean-up of historically polluted sites seems likely to become a
growth area for a number of reasons. The economic balance between bioremedi-
ation and other forms of removal or disposal appears to be shifting on a global
perspective. In addition, the spiralling demand for commercial and housing land
in many parts of the world seems set to create compelling incentives for the
reclamation and redevelopment of old sites.
In this respect phytoremediation is a technology likely to see much greater
development in the future, since its initial uses have been largely successful,
though generally limited in scale. There are clearly many advantages to the use
of whole organisms which can be managed using existing husbandry methods
and the presence of which on a site is almost universally welcomed. However,
not all of the approaches available to biotechnology are so well received.
Genetically Manipulated Organisms
There is a great deal of alarm felt by the general public with regard to the safety of
genetically manipulated organisms (GMOs) being released into the environment,
especially as the knowledge is not available to state categorically exactly the risk
involved in the horizontal spread of the 'foreign' genes. There is much active
research addressing the spread of introduced genes, for example, in the use of
chloroplasts as targets for 'foreign' DNA rather than the plant genome. This, and
various other issues raised by the use of recombinant DNA technology in envi-
ronmental biotechnology, are addressed in a recent review (Daniell 1999). These
may be approached at many levels with regard to environmental biotechnology,
as opposed to biotechnology in general.
An obvious area for the future involvement of GMOs, or their products, would
be in the development of biosensors like the example given earlier. Their use is