Soil Contamination, Risk Assessment and Remediation

Dear Colleagues,

Contaminants in soils can not only bring negative effects to the ecosystem, but also threaten human health through various exposure routes. Despite the current achievements in understanding the factors controlling the behavior of contaminants, alterations in agricultural and industrial activities have introduced considerable emerging contaminants to both agricultural and urban soils. Systematic studies on different large-scale soil types are required to quantitively evaluate the extent of adverse effect from these emerging contaminants to the ecosystem and human health. On the other hand, the heterogeneity of physio-chemical properties and soil ecosystems makes it difficult to assess ecological and health risk correctly for traditional contaminants, such as heavy metals and POPs. Researches have been made to quantify the uncertainties of different assessment, but mostly based on statistical analysis. Evidence is needed to evaluate the applicability of these methods, so that soil quality standards and remediation techniques can be further improved for more sustainable land management.

Therefore, this Special Issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) focuses on the current state of knowledge of both emerging and traditional contaminants in contaminated or remediated soils. New research papers, reviews, case reports, and conference papers are welcome to this issue. Papers dealing with analytical method development, new approaches to derive soil quality standards, remediation techniques, risk assessment, and management are also welcome. Other manuscript types accepted include brief reports and commentaries. 

Dr. Lingchen Mao
Prof. Dr. Zongli Yao
Guest Editors

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