Pesticides have been used to kill pests such as insects, fungi, rodents, and unwanted plants. Since these compounds are potentially toxic to the target organisms, they could also be harmful to human health and the environment. Several chronic adverse effects have been identified even after months or years of exposure. A few pesticide degradation processes have been studied including adsorption, homogeneous and heterogeneous (photo)catalytic oxidation, and biological methods. Although these methods have been playing a significant part in the pesticide's degradation, there are still gaps in many aspects. Here, we review the catalytic degradation of these pollutants by (metallo)porphyrins. To evaluate the P450 cytochrome's biomimetic behavior of these catalysts, various synthesized porphyrins have been used since 1999 and their activities were summarized in this manuscript. The porphyrins appear to act as good catalysts for the degradation of pesticides; in fact, they also have been shown as a useful tool for the elucidation of their degradation products. Achieving pesticide mineralization without intermediate products is still challenging, although the ability of this kind of catalysts to conduct the formation of some lower toxic products comparing their precursors has been verified.
Keywords: Biomimetic systems; Catalysis; Environment; Metabolites; P450 cytochromes; Pesticides.
© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.