Bioremediation of tetramethyl thiuram disulfide and resource utilization of natural rubber wastewater by WR-2 Bacillus-dominated microbial community.

Tetramethyl thiuram disulfide (TMTD), an emerging pollutant with ecotoxicity and accumulation in rubber wastewater, is directly discharged by factories into the surrounding soil to save costs, and this disrupts the nearby ecosystem. In this study, an efficient bioremediation microbial community (WR-2) dominated by Bacillus was acclimatized and isolated from soil contaminated by rubber wastewater. After passing through the metabolic process of WR-2, the ecotoxic TMTD decomposes within 14 days. In the pot experiment, WR-2 not only completed the bioremediation of contaminated soil but also significantly improved the crop growth conditions and the product quality. These results show that WR-2 has broad application prospects in the bioremediation of soil contaminated by rubber wastewater. It also provides a theoretical framework for the resource utilization of the effluent at the end of the initial rubber processing.