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The growth of population has led to environmental pollution due to the desire of most part of people to have a higher living standard. The term environmental pollution means the penetration of liquid, solid and gaseous substances and electric, thermal, sonic and magnetic energy into the environment, in amounts that cause the change of composition and quality of natural components with an undesirable impact on humans, fauna, and flora. This is why nowadays, the prevention of environmental pollution by using nanotechnologies to reduce waste quantities is so important. Nanomaterials can be found in diverse applications of environmental issues. The main advantage of nanomaterials is that they can be controlled in order to create new properties that are not available in the particles made from the same material on a macro or micrometric scale. Other features of nanomaterials refer to an increased reactivity and a modified reaction rate, properties that determine the nanomaterials to have an increased contact with contaminating agents, leading to a rapid reduction of their concentrations. Some of the applications of nano-sized materials are still in the research phase. At present, studies regarding particles such as carbon nanotubes, dendrimers, self-assembled monolayers TiO2 on porous and organically modified silica(SOMS) substrates are conducted.Some important nanomaterials are:•Metallic oxides containing zinc oxide (ZnO), titanium dioxide (TiO2), iron oxide (Fe3O4), cerium oxide (CeO2)•Carbon nanotubes and fullerenes in the form of ellipsoidal flakes or carbon nanotubes and spheroidal flakes.•Zero-valent metals including zero-valent iron with an increased surface reactivity used in soil, water and sedimentremediation processes.•Quantum dots are semiconductors with linked electron-gap pairs available in all the three dimensions of the space.•Dendrimers are polymers with a high degree of branching, created in order to include different functional groups.•Composite nanomaterials made from nanomaterial material combined with a massive material or 2 or more nanoscale materials.