Environmental remediation is the removal of pollutants, contaminants, and radiation from the environment found within soil, air, ground water, surface water, biota, and sediment. The purpose of environmental remediation is to protect human health and the health of ecosystems from pollutants injected into the environment from human activity. Environmental remediation works in conjunction with environmental monitoring, and environmental remediation projects are subject to many regulatory requirements revolving around human health and ecological risks.
Contaminants and pollutants of interest to be remediated from the environment are both organic and inorganic. There are two categories of environmental remediation technologies; in-situ technologies and ex-situ technologies. In-situ environmental remediation technologies seek to eliminate pollutants from the environment without removing what holds the pollutants from the environment such as soil or groundwater. Ex-situ environmental remediation technologies extract pollutants from the environment by totally removing the contaminated media from the environment such as soil or groundwater.
