Introduction Deterioration of soils and aquifers has become evident in the last few years as a result of inappropriate final disposal procedures for all sorts of waste materials. Oil exploitation, uncontrolled fuel spills, poor practices for final disposal of industrial wastes, overuse of pesticides, and operation of sanitary landfills are some causes of pollution of soils and groundwaters. In the course of the last two decades a wide variety of technologies has been developed for clean-up operations of contaminated soils and aquifers. They can be classified in terms of their principle of operation: physicochemical, thermal and biological. Among the biological technologies bioremediation has evolved as the most promising one because of its economical, safety and environmental features since organic contaminants become actually transformed, and some of them are fully mineralized. The success of bioremediation techniques is directly related to the metabolic capability of involved microorganisms and can be affected by the surrounding microenvironment. This chapter describes the mechanism of bioremediation; an overview is presented of its virtues and weaknesses.
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