This volume reflects the content of the Symposium on the Ecology of Industrial Pollution which was held in Birmingham, UK, from 7 to 8 April 2008. The principal aim of this symposium and the associated volume was to provide an interdisciplinary analysis of a particular environmental problem that has historically affected many parts of the world and continues to do so. One of the key approaches was to obtain inputs from academics, enforcers and practitioners in order to provide a balanced view of the issue and to identify any potential areas of disagreement! Second, we recognised that, although many of the individual components of pollutants are dealt with in meetings and publications, there is little interaction between researchers who deal with the ‘pure science’ issues and those who deal with more technological aspects, nor between microbiologists, botanists and zoologists. By bringing these normally disparate areas together, we hoped to provide new research areas and more importantly exchange of existing knowledge and experiences.

In our introduction we try to provide an overview of the key subject areas covered within the volume and identify what we consider to be the principal questions that were generated from discussions at the meeting. The remainder of the book is not subdivided but instead the chapters are arranged into what we hope to be a logical progression from the main ecological impacts through monitoring techniques and finishing with ecological remediation technologies and system recovery.