International Journal of Advancements in Research & Technology, Volume 2, Issue 7, July-2013 211 ISSN 2278-7763 Copyright © 2013 SciResPub. IJOART Petrochemical Industrial Waste: Bioremediation Techniques An Overview Sheetal Koul and MH Fulekar * Department of Life Sciences, University of Mumbai, Santacruz (E), Mumbai- 400 098, India * School of Environment and Sustainable development, Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar – 482030, India * Email: mhfulekar@yahoo.com ABSTRACT The petrochemical industry is one such major source of hazardous waste, produced during manufacture of Petrochemical products. These wastes are often released in the environment. Petrochemical Solid waste is generally associated with more hazardous constituents and accordingly carries a higher level of public health and environmental risk potential. In the present paper the petrochemical waste compound in particular Polycyclic Aromatic Hyrocarbons (PAH) were described as persistent pollutant in soil-water environment. The microbial sources which have been found and reported for PAH compound degradation have been cited with examples viz: potential species of Bacteria, species of Fungal and actinomycetes have been described for microbial degradation. The factors influencing microbial degradation including the influence of GMO’s on bioremediation have been cited in the paper. This would serve as a bioremediation technique for microbial degradation of petrochemical waste. Keywords: Bioremediation, Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons’ (PAH), Petrochemical Solid waste, GMO’s IJOART