Abstract
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) represent a major class of organic compounds (Xue and Warshawsky 2005), that consist of over 100 individual moieties (Rehmann et al. 2008). Because of their toxicity and wide spread occurrence, PAH represent one of the most important groups of environmental pollutants (Eggen and Majcherczyk 1998). They consist of two or more fused benzene rings in linear, angular or cluster arrangements. The persistence of these chemicals in the environment is mainly due to their low solubility in water and stable polycondensed aromatic structure. Hydrophobicity and recalcitrance of PAHs to microbial degradation generally increase as the molecular weight increases. Besides being toxic to animals, some PAHs with four or more benzene rings, such as benzo[a]anthracene, chrysene and benzo[a]pyrene, have been shown to be carcinogenic (Bezalel et al. 1996).
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Rojo-Nieto, E., Perales-Vargas-Machuca, J.A. (2012). Microbial Degradation of PAHs: Organisms and Environmental Compartments. In: Singh, S. (eds) Microbial Degradation of Xenobiotics. Environmental Science and Engineering(). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23789-8_10
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