land quality & pollution

LAND QUALITY & POLLUTION

• Land with pollutants at above-background concentrations causing, or with the potential to cause, adverse impacts to human health, the environment or any environmental value.

• ‘Pollutants' refers to chemicals such as heavy metals, pesticides, herbicides, oils, hydrocarbons and other toxic chemicals.

• The toxicity and persistence of pollutants in soils, as well as their direct uptake by people, plants and animals, is the major concern with land contamination.

• Contaminated sites are usually identified after the polluting activity or land use has ended and the land is being redeveloped for another use.• Some contaminated sites are

identified once groundwater pollutant plumes are detected in inland waters or bore water.

• Pollutants can bind to soil particles and be taken up by vegetation, thereby entering the foodchain.

• Pollutants that do not bind to soil can get washed down to the water table, or blown away by wind to a new location.

Abidjan, Ivory Coast,

Africa

The ship Probo Koala dumped the waste after deeming European disposal methods too expensive.

The city borders a large lagoon, now poisoned by the toxic oil sludge.

• When it rains, the water flows through the streets. With the water comes a toxic soup of industrial poison -- a dark, glistening mess reeking of sulphur and rotten eggs. The caustic fumes it releases cause vomiting, nosebleeds, headache and rashes.

• Official local autopsy reports on 12 alleged victims appeared to show fatal levels of the poisonous gas hydrogen sulphide, one of the waste's lethal by-products.

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/audio/2009/sep/17/trafigura-oil-toxic-dumping

Waste removal experts clear hazardous material from a site in Abidjan, Ivory Coast in November 2006.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/16/trafigura-african-pollution-disaster

Chernobyl, Ukraine

• 1986• Explosion• Radioactive plume across Europe• Radioactive nuclides inc. caesium, iodine,

strontium and plutonium.• Land as far away as Ireland is affected by bio-

accumulation of Caesium 137.

remediation