Soil Pollution

Soil pollution

SOIL: Component definition:  Mixture of mineral matter, organic matter, water, and air.

What is Soil Pollution?

The deposition of waste materials  (solid and liquid) on land or underground in a way that can contaminate the soil or groundwater and can affect human health, and cause nuisance is known as soil pollution.

Types of Soil Pollutants:

Soil Pollutants can be categorized into two

groups.

 1) Organic Pollutants

 2) Inorganic Pollutants

1) Organic Pollutants:

These pollutants are organic in nature and include

industrial organics and pesticides.

Industrial organics: These pollutants cause land pollution by accidents. Industrial organics include petroleum products (e.g. benzenes and Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons PAHs), military explosives (Trinitrotoluene TNT) and solvents used in the manufacturing processes.

Pesticides: Pesticides are organic chemicals used to control or kill pests of agricultural crops.

Pests:  A destructive insect, plant or other animal that attacks crops.

Pesticides include:

Insecticides: Used to kill insects 

Fungicides: Used to kill fungi 

Herbicides: Used to kill weeds 

Nematicides: Used to kill nematodes 

Rodenticides: Used to kill rodents 

In agricultural land insecticides, fungicides and herbicides are used in largest quantities. All types of pesticides find their way into soil system and causing soil pollution.

2) Inorganic Pollutants:

These pollutants have inorganic nature and include heavy metals.


Heavy metals include cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel, selenium, arsenic etc. These metals reach the soil system, enter food chain and cause human health effects.

Soil >    Plants     >        Animals       >      Humans

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