A review on sources and distribution of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in wetland ecosystem: focusing on plant-biomonitoring and phytoremediation

In the contemporary era, rapid global urbanization, coupled with intense industrial development, has led to a continuous influx of carcinogenic pollutants like PAHs, into the ecosystems. Owing to their long-range transportation potential, PAHs have driven their way from a regional scale to a global platform and become readily available in air, water, sediment, and biota of the most ecologically diverse ecosystems, like wetlands. The wetland ecosystems, due to their susceptibility to anthropogenic activities, face a heightened vulnerability to anthropogenic PAHs pollution. This PAHs pollution load adversely influences the unique biodiversity of wetlands. Hence, it is a pertinent to implement immediate and continuous monitoring programs to assess the present and ongoing PAHs pollution status. In this context, the use of plants for biomonitoring emerges as a potential alternative tool to the traditional monitoring process which also offers simultaneous mitigation mechanism and provides sustainability through detoxification. Therefore, sources and distribution of PAHs in wetland sediment and water are discussed in this review work to highlight the major sources of PAHs pollution and their distribution which would aid in proper strategic planning for phytoremediation the present study focuses on phytoremediation studies of wetland PAHs reported so far emphasizing its potential as a sustainable solution for addressing and mitigating PAHs pollution in wetlands. Various phytoremediation mechanisms are pointed out case to case to understand the plants’ potential in bioremediation technique. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2025.