Soil contamination or
soil pollution is caused by the presence of
xenobiotic(human-made) chemicals or other alteration in the natural soil environment. It is typically caused by industrial activity, agricultural chemicals, or improper disposal of
waste. The most common chemicals involved are petroleum
hydrocarbons, polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (such as naphthalene and benzo(a)pyrene),
solvents, pesticides,
lead, and other
heavy metals. Contamination is correlated with the degree of
industrialization and intensity of chemical usage.
[citation needed]
The concern over soil contamination stems primarily from health risks, from direct contact with the contaminated soil, vapors from the contaminants, and from secondary contamination of water supplies within and underlying the soil.
[1]Mapping of contaminated soil sites and the resulting cleanup are time consuming and expensive tasks, requiring extensive amounts of
geology,
hydrology,
chemistry,
computer modeling skills, and
GIS in Environmental Contamination, as well as an appreciation of the history of industrial chemistry.
In
North America and
Western Europe that the extent of contaminated land is best known, with many of countries in these areas having a legal framework to identify and deal with this environmental problem. Developing countries tend to be less tightly regulated despite some of them having undergone significant industrialization.
[citation needed]
Soil contamination can be caused by:
Historical deposition of
coal ash used for residential, commercial, and industrial heating, as well as for industrial processes such as ore smelting, were a common source of contamination in areas that were industrialized before about 1960. Coal naturally concentrates lead and zinc during its formation, as well as other heavy metals to a lesser degree. When the coal is burned, most of these metals become concentrated in the ash (the principal exception being mercury). Coal ash and
slag may contain sufficient lead to qualify as a "characteristic hazardous waste", defined in the USA as containing more than 5 mg/L of extractable lead using the
TCLP procedure. In addition to lead, coal ash typically contains variable but significant concentrations of polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs; e.g., benzo(a)anthracene, benzo(b)fluoranthene, benzo(k)fluoranthene, benzo(a)pyrene, indeno(cd)pyrene, phenanthrene, anthracene, and others). These PAHs are known human carcinogens and the acceptable concentrations of them in soil are typically around 1 mg/kg. Coal ash and slag can be recognized by the presence of off-white grains in soil, gray heterogeneous soil, or (coal slag) bubbly, vesicular pebble-sized grains.
Treated sewage
sludge, known in the industry as biosolids, has become controversial as a fertilizer to the land. As it is the byproduct of sewage treatment, it generally contains more contaminants such as organisms, pesticides, and heavy metals than other soil.
[2]
In the European Union, the
Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive allows sewage sludge to be sprayed onto land. The volume is expected to double to 185,000 tons of dry solids in 2005. This has good agricultural properties due to the high
nitrogen and
phosphatecontent. In 1990/1991, 13% wet weight was sprayed onto 0.13% of the land; however, this is expected to rise 15 fold by 2005.
[needs update] Advocates
[who?] say there is a need to control this so that
pathogenic microorganisms do not get into water courses and to ensure that there is no accumulation of
heavy metals in the top soil.
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A
pesticide is a substance or mixture of substances used to kill a pest. A pesticide may be a chemical substance, biological agent (such as a virus or bacteria), antimicrobial, disinfectant or device used against any pest. Pests include insects, plant pathogens, weeds, mollusks, birds, mammals, fish, nematodes (roundworms) and microbes that compete with humans for food, destroy property, spread or are a vector for disease or cause a nuisance. Although there are benefits to the use of pesticides, there are also drawbacks, such as potential toxicity to humans and other organisms.
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Herbicides are used to kill weeds, especially on pavements and railways. They are similar to auxins and most are biodegrale by soil bacteria. However, one group derived from
trinitrotoluene (2:4 D and 2:4:5 T) have the impurity dioxin, which is very toxic and causes fatality even in low concentrations. Another herbicide is
Paraquat. It is highly toxic but it rapidly degrades in soil due to the action of bacteria and does not kill soil fauna.
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Insecticides are used to rid farms of pests which damage crops. The insects damage not only standing crops but also stored ones and in the tropics it is reckoned that one third of the total production is lost during food storage. As with fungicides, the first insecticides used in the nineteenth century were inorganic e.g.Paris Green and other compounds of arsenic. Nicotine has also been used since the late eighteenth century.
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There are now two main groups of synthetic insecticides -
1.
Organochlorines include
DDT,
Aldrin,
Dieldrin and BHC. They are cheap to produce, potent and persistent. DDT was used on a massive scale from the 1930s, with a peak of 72,000 tonnes used 1970. Then usage fell as the harmful environmental effects were realized. It was found worldwide in fish and birds and was even discovered in the snow in the
Antarctic. It is only slightly soluble in water but is very soluble in the bloodstream. It affects the nervous and endocrine systems and causes the eggshells of birds to lack calcium causing them to be easily breakable. It is thought to be responsible for the decline of the numbers of birds of prey like
ospreys and
peregrine falcons in the 1950s - they are now recovering.
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As well as increased concentration via the food chain, it is known to enter via permeable membranes, so fish get it through their gills. As it has low water solubility, it tends to stay at the water surface, so organisms that live there are most affected. DDT found in fish that formed part of the human food chain caused concern, but the levels found in the liver, kidney and brain tissues was less than 1 ppm and in fat was 10 ppm which was below the level likely to cause harm. However, DDT was banned in the UK and the United States to stop the further build up of it in the food chain. U.S. manufactureres continued to sell DDT to developing countries, who could not afford the expensive replacement chemicals and who did not have such stringent regulations governing the use of pesticides.
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Contaminated or polluted soil directly affects human health through direct contact with soil or via inhalation of soil contaminants which have vaporized; potentially greater threats are posed by the infiltration of soil contamination into groundwater
aquifers used for human consumption, sometimes in areas apparently far removed from any apparent source of above ground contamination.
Health consequences from exposure to soil contamination vary greatly depending on pollutant type, pathway of attack and vulnerability of the exposed population. Chronic exposure to chromium, lead and other metals, petroleum, solvents, and many pesticide and herbicide formulations can be carcinogenic, can cause
congenital disorders, or can cause other chronic health conditions. Industrial or man-made concentrations of naturally occurring substances, such as nitrate and ammonia associated with livestock manure from agricultural operations, have also been identified as health hazards in soil and groundwater.
[3]
Chronic exposure to benzene at sufficient concentrations is known to be associated with higher incidence of leukemia. Mercury and cyclodienes are known to induce higher incidences of kidney damage, some irreversible. PCBs and cyclodienes are linked to liver toxicity. Organophosphates and carbomates can induce a chain of responses leading to neuromuscular blockage. Many chlorinated solvents induce liver changes, kidney changes and depression of the central nervous system. There is an entire spectrum of further health effects such as headache, nausea, fatigue, eye irritation and skin rash for the above cited and other chemicals. At sufficient dosages a large number of soil contaminants can cause death by exposure via direct contact, inhalation or ingestion of contaminants in groundwater contaminated through soil.
[4]
The Scottish Government has commissioned the
Institute of Occupational Medicine to undertake a review of methods to assess risk to human health from contaminated land. The overall aim of the project is to work up guidance that should be useful to Scottish Local Authorities in assessing whether sites represent a significant possibility of significant harm (SPOSH) to human health. It is envisaged that the output of the project will be a short document providing high level guidance on health risk assessment with reference to existing published guidance and methodologies that have been identified as being particularly relevant and helpful. The project will examine how policy guidelines have been developed for determining the acceptability of risks to human health and propose an approach for assessing what constitutes unacceptable risk in line with the criteria for SPOSH as defined in the legislation and the Scottish Statutory Guidance.
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Not unexpectedly, soil contaminants can have significant deleterious consequences for ecosystems.
[5] There are radical soil chemistry changes which can arise from the presence of many hazardous chemicals even at low concentration of the contaminant species. These changes can manifest in the alteration of
metabolism of endemic
microorganisms and
arthropods resident in a given soil environment. The result can be virtual eradication of some of the primary food chain, which in turn could have major consequences for
predator or consumer species. Even if the chemical effect on lower life forms is small, the lower pyramid levels of the
food chain may ingest alien chemicals, which normally become more concentrated for each consuming rung of the food chain. Many of these effects are now well known, such as the concentration of persistent DDT materials for avian consumers, leading to weakening of egg shells, increased chick
mortality and potential extinction of species.
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Effects occur to
agricultural lands which have certain types of soil contamination. Contaminants typically alter plant metabolism, often causing a reduction in crop yields. This has a secondary effect upon
soil conservation, since the languishing crops cannot shield the Earth's soil from
erosion. Some of these chemical contaminants have long
half-lives and in other cases derivative chemicals are formed from decay of primary soil contaminants.
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- Excavate soil and take it to a disposal site away from ready pathways for human or sensitive ecosystem contact. This technique also applies to dredging of bay muds containing toxins.
- Aeration of soils at the contaminated site (with attendant risk of creating air pollution)
- Thermal remediation by introduction of heat to raise subsurface temperatures sufficiently high to volatize chemical contaminants out of the soil for vapour extraction. Technologies include ISTD,electrical resistance heating (ERH), and ET-DSPtm.
- Bioremediation, involving microbial digestion of certain organic chemicals. Techniques used in bioremediation include landfarming, biostimulation and bioaugmentating soil biota with commercially available microflora.
- Extraction of groundwater or soil vapor with an active electromechanical system, with subsequent stripping of the contaminants from the extract.
- Containment of the soil contaminants (such as by capping or paving over in place).
- Phytoremediation, or using plants (such as willow) to extract heavy metals
Various national standards for concentrations of particular contaminants include the United States EPA Region 9 Preliminary Remediation Goals (U.S. PRGs), the U.S. EPA Region 3 Risk Based Concentrations (U.S. EPA RBCs) and National Environment Protection Council of Australia Guideline on Investigation Levels in Soil and Groundwater.
The immense and sustained growth of the People's Republic of China since the 1970s has exacted a price from the land in increased soil pollution. The State Environmental Protection Administration believes it to be a threat to the environment, to food safety and to sustainable agriculture. According to a scientific sampling, 150 million mi (100,000 square kilometers) of China’s cultivated land have been polluted, with contaminated water being used to irrigate a further 32.5 million mi (21,670 square kilometers) and another 2 million mi (1,300 square kilometers) covered or destroyed by solid waste. In total, the area accounts for one-tenth of China’s cultivatable land, and is mostly in economically developed areas. An estimated 12 million tonnes of grain are contaminated by heavy metals every year, causing direct losses of 20 billion yuan (US$2.57 billion).[7]
Generic guidance commonly used in the
UK are the Soil Guideline Values published by DEFRA and the Environment Agency. These are screening values that demonstrate the minimal acceptable level of a substance. Above this there can be no assurances in terms of significant risk of harm to human health. These have been derived using the Contaminated Land Exposure Assessment Model (CLEA UK). Certain input parameters such as Health Criteria Values, age and land use are fed into CLEA UK to obtain a probabilistic output
[citation needed].
Guidance by the Inter Departmental Committee for the Redevelopment of Contaminated Land (ICRCL) has been formally withdrawn by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), for use as a prescriptive document to determine the potential need for remediation or further assessment.
The CLEA model published by DEFRA and the Environment Agency (EA) in March 2002 sets a framework for the appropriate assessment of risks to human health from contaminated land, as required by Part IIA of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. As part of this framework, generic
Soil Guideline Values (SGVs) have currently been derived for ten contaminants to be used as "intervention values"
[citation needed]. These values should not be considered as remedial targets but values above which further detailed assessment should be considered; see
Dutch standards.
Three sets of CLEA SGVs have been produced for three different land uses, namely
- residential (with and without plant uptake)
- allotments
- commercial/industrial
It is intended that the
SGVs replace the former ICRCL values. It should be noted that the CLEA SGVs relate to assessing chronic (long term) risks to human health and do not apply to the protection of ground workers during construction, or other potential receptors such as groundwater, buildings, plants or other ecosystems. The CLEA SGVs are not directly applicable to a site completely covered in hardstanding, as there is no direct exposure route to contaminated soils.
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To date, the first ten of fifty-five contaminant SGVs have been published, for the following: arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, inorganic mercury, nickel, selenium ethyl benzene, phenol and toluene. Draft SGVs for benzene, naphthalene and xylene have been produced but their publication is on hold. Toxicological data (Tox) has been published for each of these contaminants as well as for benzo[a]pyrene, benzene, dioxins, furans and dioxin-like PCBs, naphthalene, vinyl chloride, 1,1,2,2 tetrachloroethane and 1,1,1,2 tetrachloroethane, 1,1,1 trichloroethane, tetrachloroethene, carbon tetrachloride, 1,2-dichloroethane, trichloroethene and xylene. The SGVs for ethyl benzene, phenol and toluene are dependent on the soil organic matter (SOM) content (which can be calculated from the total organic carbon (TOC) content). As an initial screen the SGVs for 1% SOM are considered to be appropriate.
