Abstract
Tremendous surge in the industrialization and infrastructure development worldwide have led to a significant rise in environmental pollutants in the last 2-3 decades. Pollutants in the natural environment consist of highly diversified and complex mixtures. A single biomarker cannot be used to assess a complete identification of environmental pollutants. In this context, it is highly recommended by environmental scientists to evaluate a set of complementary biomarkers for the complete assessment of toxic burden of complex environmental pollutants in the exposed organisms. Moreover, a multiple biomarker approach for the stress assessment is believed to have high sensitivity and could be done in comparatively lesser measuring time. The present article focuses on the viability of usage of xenobiotic detoxification enzymes viz. phase I and II as the toxicity biomarkers. As far as our knowledge goes, we are for the first time reporting phase I and phase II enzymes together as potential toxicity biomarkers in a single article.