earthworms charles darwin’s ‘unheralded soldiers of mankind’ protective productive for man environment蚯蚓查尔斯·达尔文的名不见经传的人类士兵保护和生产对人类和环境.pdfVIP

Journal of Environmental Protection, 2010, 1, 251-260 251 doi:10.4236/jep.2010.13030 Published Online September 2010 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/jep) Earthworms: Charles Darwin’s ‘Unheralded Soldiers of Mankind’: Protective Productive for Man Environment Rajiv K. Sinha, Krunal Chauhan, Dalsukh Valani, Vinod Chandran, Brijal Kiran Soni, Vishal Patel Griffith School of Engineering (Environment), Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. Email: Rajiv.Sinha@.au Received April 15th, 2010; revised May 20th, 2010; accepted May 22nd, 2010. ABSTRACT Earthworms promises to provide cheaper solutions to several social, economic and environmental problems plaguing the human society. Earthworms can safely manage all municipal and industrial organic wastes including sewage sludge and divert them from ending up in the landfills. Their body work as a ‘biofilter’ and they can ‘purify ’ and also ‘disin- fect ’ and ‘detoxify’ municipal and several industrial wastewater. They reduce the BOD COD loads and the TDSS of wastewater significantly. They can even remove the EDCs (endocrine disrupting chemicals) from sewage which is not removed by the conventional sewage treatments plants. Earthworms can bio-accumulate and bio-transform many chemical contaminants including heavy metals and organic pollutants in soil and clean-up the contaminated lands for re-development. Earthworms restore improve soil fertility by their secretions (growth hormones) and excreta (ver- micast with beneficial soil microbes) boost ‘crop productivity’. They have potential to replace the environmentally destructive chemical fertilizers from farm production. The ‘protein rich ’ earthworm biomass is being used for produc- tion of ‘nutritive feed materials’ for fishery, dairy poultry industries. They are also being used as ‘raw materials’ for rubber, lubricant an