The removal of toxic industrial products such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)
perchloroethylene (PCE) and trichloroethylene (TCE) in soils has become a daunting and necessary
task. These compounds adsorb onto organic matter in the environment, making decontamination using
traditional approaches difficult or ineffective. The use of microbes to transform these contaminants to
non toxic degradation products is an alternative and imperative approach due to the prevalence of such
organisms within the environment. In this study; the use of bacteria in the microbial degradation of
polychlorinated biphenyls blend (Askarel) was explored. The notable bacteria isolated from dumpsites
in Ore, Ondo state were identified using morphological and biochemical characteristics. These include:
Pseudomonas, Micrococcus, Corynebacteria, Bacillus, Achromobacter and Arthrobacter species. The
bacterial isolates potential to utilize Polychlorinated biphenyls blend (Askarel) as carbon source was
investigated for twenty-one days period. From the results obtained, there was a general decrease in the
pH and increase in mean Optical density (O.D); were the mean pH and O.D readings ranged between
(3.08-6.02 and 0.060-0.557) respectively