Prospects of emerging PAH sources and remediation technologies: insights from Africa.

Remediation of polluted environmental media is critical to realization of the goals of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (UNDER) project. Many natural-resource dependent economies in Africa are characterized by numerous contaminated sites resulting from conventional and artisanal natural-resource mining. Alongside these extractive activities, there are refining, processing, and power plant operations, agriculture, urban, and infrastructure developments that contribute to increased discharges of toxins into the environment, particularly polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are carcinogenic in nature.