Neil: I'm Neil.
Beth: And I'm Beth.
Neil: Now, imagine a field polluted by spilled oil.
Toxic waste has mixed into the water and chemical fumes have overtaken the air,
leaving animals dead and the land unsafe for humans.
Unfortunately, situations like this are common all over the world.
Beth: Cleaning up chemical pollution is dangerous and expensive,
and mostly involves highly technological equipment.
But what if there was a more natural solution?
Recently, scientists have been developing a new technique for cleaning pollution:
letting plants do the work instead.
Neil: Yes, plants like water hyacinths have been used to clean rivers
by sucking up oil spilled into the water,
and researchers have successfully used fungi to breakdown plastic waste.
In this programme, we'll be hearing about plants that fight pollution,
and of course, we'll be learning some useful new vocabulary too.
Beth: Great, but first I have a question for you, Neil.
One word we'll be hearing a lot in this programme is 'phytoremediation' –
the technique that certain plants use to remove harmful chemicals from polluted environments.
But how do they do this?