The concept of using plants to clean up their environment is not a new one, but most research in this area was strictly in studying those few wild plants that actually grew in waste infested areas. It wasn't until Dr. Ilya Raskin, a Russian born US educated scientist, came along that phytoremediation was actually born. In 1989, he encountered a company called Envirogen Inc. which was using mico-organisims to degrade and clean up oils and chemicals in soil. Dr. Raskin became interested in finding a similar technology to clean up heavy metals, one this micro-organisms just can't do. It was at this point that Dr. Raskin remembered some reading he did back home.
Some plants have a high capability of accumulating metals from the soil.
It was then that phytoremediation was born. Dr. Raskin and others have science spent many hours finding those plants that best took metals from their environment. Pytoremediation can and has been used to clean up metals, pesticides, solvents, explosives, crude oil, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, land fill leachates, agricultural runoff, acid mine drainage, radioactive contamination, etc. Phytoremediation is an environmentally friendly, safe, cheap way to clean up contaminants. Early estimates on the costs have shown that plants could do that same job as a group of engineers for one tenth of the cost.