Soil pollution: a hidden reality


Book Description

This document presents key messages and the state-of-the-art of soil pollution, its implications on food safety and human health. It aims to set the basis for further discussion during the forthcoming Global Symposium on Soil Pollution (GSOP18), to be held at FAO HQ from May 2nd to 4th 2018. The publication has been reviewed by the Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soil (ITPS) and contributing authors. It addresses scientific evidences on soil pollution and highlights the need to assess the extent of soil pollution globally in order to achieve food safety and sustainable development. This is linked to FAO’s strategic objectives, especially SO1, SO2, SO4 and SO5 because of the crucial role of soils to ensure effective nutrient cycling to produce nutritious and safe food, reduce atmospheric CO2 and N2O concentrations and thus mitigate climate change, develop sustainable soil management practices that enhance agricultural resilience to extreme climate events by reducing soil degradation processes. This document will be a reference material for those interested in learning more about sources and effects of soil pollution.




Pollution in a Promised Land


Book Description

"This book is likely to become the future point of reference for scholarship on environmental issues in Israel. Tal combines his extensive inside knowledge with broad and thorough research to take the reader clearly through a complex fabric of personalities, organizations, and issues."—Stuart Schoenfeld, York University "This is truly an excellent book. It is the first treatment of the whole array of environmental issues in Israel, and in its historical context – an absolute necessity. Extremely well-written and in fact hard to put down, this book is useful on many levels, for United Nations Agencies and development officials, Israeli and Palestinian government officials, and environmentalists and teachers around the world."—Brock Evans, Executive Director, The Endangered Species Coalition and author of many articles and books on the politics of the environment "Pollution in a Promised Land is an innovative book, and an important one, by perhaps the most prominent environmental activist in Israel. Tal's approach is to take an "eagle's eye view" of his vast subject, now gliding far above, providing overview, now swooping down very close and, through interviews or anecdotes, describing his subject with great immediacy and in memorable detail."—Noah J. Efron, Bar Ilan University "Anyone who cares about the land of Israel should read Pollution in a Promised Land. It is critical to understanding the social, political, and scientific dimensions of the country's environmental challenges as well as the country's remarkable ecological achievements. Alon Tal is uniquely qualified to present this fascinating and dramatic environmental history."—Tzachi Hanegbi, Minister of the Environment, Israel




Soil Pollution


Book Description

This graduate-level text and reference work is unique among the soil literature. It deals with the interdisciplinary fields of soil pollution and remediation. It starts off with a thorough and comprehensible introduction to the relevant fundamentals of mineralogy, chemistry, and soil properties. Readers are thus well prepared to understand the biochemical aspects of soil remediation then presented. The book’s holistic approach and narrative style are complemented by numerous and detailed illustrations. Soil pollution is an asset not only to graduate students and instructors, but also to professionals from the environmental and agricultural sciences, as it provides an integrated overview of previously separately treated material.




Soil Pollution


Book Description

Soil Pollution: From Monitoring to Remediation provides comprehensive information on soil pollution, including causes, distribution, transport, the transformation and fate of pollutants in soil, and metabolite accumulation. The book covers organic, inorganic and nanoparticle pollutants and methodologies for their monitoring. Features a critical discussion on ecotoxicological and human effects of soil pollution, and strategies for soil protection and remediation. Meticulously organized, this is an ideal resource for students, researchers and professionals, providing up-to-date foundational content for those already familiar with the field. Chapters are highly accessible, offering an authoritative introduction for non-specialists and undergraduate students alike. - Highlights the relevance of soil pollution for a sustainable environment in chapters written by interdisciplinary expert academics and professionals from around the world - Includes cases studies of techniques used to monitor soil pollution - Includes a chapter on nanoparticles as soil pollutants - Offers comprehensive coverage of soil pollution including types and causes




Soil Pollution - An Emerging Threat to Agriculture


Book Description

The book provides reader with a comprehensive up-to-date overview of various aspects of soil pollutants manifestation of toxicity. The book highlights their interactions with soil constituents, their toxicity to agro-ecosystem & human health, methodologies of toxicity assessment along with remediation technologies for the polluted land by citing case studies. It gives special emphasis on scenario of soil pollution threats in developing countries and ways to counteract these in low cost ways which have so far been ignored. It also explicitly highlights the need for soil protection policy and identifies its key considerations after analyzing basic functions of soil and the types of threats perceived. This book will be a useful resource for graduate students and researchers in the field of environmental and agricultural sciences, as well as for personnel involved in environmental impact assessment and policy making.




Soil Pollution


Book Description

The soil is the medium through which pollutants originating from human activities, both in agriculture and industry, move from the land surfaces to groundwater. Polluting substances are subject to complex physical, chemical and biological transformations during their movement through the soil. Their displacement depends on the transport properties of the water-air-soil system and on the molecular properties of the pollutants. Prediction of soil pollution and restoration of polluted soils requires an under standing of the processes controlling the fate of pollutants in the soil medium and of the dynamics of the contaminants in the un saturated zone. Our book was conceived· as a basic overview of the processes governing the behavior of pollutants as affected by soil constituents and environmental factors. It was written for the use of specialists working on soil and unsaturated zone pollution and restoration, as well as for graduate students starting research in this field. Since many specialists working on soil restoration lack a back ground in soil science or a knowledge of the properties of soil pollutants, we have included this information which forms the first part of the book. In the second part, we discuss the partitioning of pollutants between the aqueous, solid and gaseous phase of the soil medium. The retention, transformation and transport of pollutants in the soils form the third section.




Pollution Is Colonialism


Book Description

In Pollution Is Colonialism Max Liboiron presents a framework for understanding scientific research methods as practices that can align with or against colonialism. They point out that even when researchers are working toward benevolent goals, environmental science and activism are often premised on a colonial worldview and access to land. Focusing on plastic pollution, the book models an anticolonial scientific practice aligned with Indigenous, particularly Métis, concepts of land, ethics, and relations. Liboiron draws on their work in the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR)—an anticolonial science laboratory in Newfoundland, Canada—to illuminate how pollution is not a symptom of capitalism but a violent enactment of colonial land relations that claim access to Indigenous land. Liboiron's creative, lively, and passionate text refuses theories of pollution that make Indigenous land available for settler and colonial goals. In this way, their methodology demonstrates that anticolonial science is not only possible but is currently being practiced in ways that enact more ethical modes of being in the world.




Let's Investigate Plastic Pollution


Book Description

Plastic pollution is one of the most damaging environmental issues we face today. And no one is more passionate about solving this problem and protecting our world than kids! This new title in the Get Started With STEM series gives young science enthusiasts all the information they need to investigate and do their part to help solve this problem now and for the future. Packed with facts, discussion topics, imaginative ideas for activities, experiments, and investigations, this book will have students eager to use their science skills and knowledge to tackle plastic pollution head on.




Environmental and Pollution Science


Book Description

Environmental and Pollution Science, Third Edition, continues its tradition on providing readers with the scientific basis to understand, manage, mitigate, and prevent pollution across the environment, be it air, land, or water. Pollution originates from a wide variety of sources, both natural and man-made, and occurs in a wide variety of forms including, biological, chemical, particulate or even energy, making a multivariate approach to assessment and mitigation essential for success. This third edition has been updated and revised to include topics that are critical to addressing pollution issues, from human-health impacts to environmental justice to developing sustainable solutions. Environmental and Pollution Science, Third Edition is designed to give readers the tools to be able to understand and implement multi-disciplinary approaches to help solve current and future environmental pollution problems. - Emphasizes conceptual understanding of environmental systems and can be used by students and professionals from a diversity of backgrounds focusing on the environment - Covers many aspects critical to assessing and managing environmental pollution including characterization, risk assessment, regulation, transport and fate, and remediation or restoration - New topics to this edition include Ecosystems and Ecosystem Services, Pollution in the Global System, Human Health Impacts, the interrelation between Soil and Human Health, Environmental Justice and Community Engagement, and Sustainability and Sustainable Solutions - Includes color photos and diagrams, chapter questions and problems, and highlighted key words




Global Assessment of Soil Pollution


Book Description

World soil health is under pressure from erosion, loss of soil organic carbon and biodiversity, pollution, and salinization. This report presents the status and drivers of global soil pollution, as well as recommendations to address the issue such as using bioremediation technologies.