Bacterial Communities of Polychlorinated Biphenyls Polluted Soil Around an E-waste Recycling Workshop

Abstract

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) contamination that has resulted from the recycling of electronic power capacitors and transformers could lead to deterioration in soil quality and high ecological risk. As microorganisms are generally considered to be the best indicators of soil pollution, the diversity of bacterial communities in the soil around an e-waste recycling workshop in the Taizhou e-waste recycling area of China was studied using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE). The results indicated that the PCBs content in the soil decreased with increasing distance from the recycling workshop. Moreover, a gradual change in soil bacteria diversity along the PCBs pollution gradient was observed. Furthermore, the predominance of Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes was found on the basis of sequence analysis and some highly similar subsequences of microorganisms were also found to be closely related to the catabolism of PCBs and other organic compounds. In a word, our results indicated that PCBs pollutants had an evident impact on the structure of the soil microbial community and the enriched microbes might serve to decompose PCBs in soil.