A Healthy Strategy to Tackle Soil Contamination

How can we improve the quality of soil in order to re-create healthy places for healthy people? Hélène leriche and Prof. dr. Hans van Veen, an expert in microbial ecology, look for processes more respectful of our environment

- 

Soil pollution is a worldwide environmental problem. Traditionally, polluted soil is mechanically excavated and transported from the site. However, a great deal of information, like the type of contamination, its severity, location, size and depth, needs to be gathered before these heavy interventions can begin. Plus, offsite soil transport and soil cleaning processes are expensive operations.

Hence, a new practice has emerged: instead of excavating the ground, a new clean layer of soil is added on top of the contaminated area. The site, with one metre of extra soil, is then ready for construction. It will soon become a green paradise, which children and the elderly can safely use, a trendy urban core where active people can create new things and make our world better. Or will they? Is it possible to have a good and healthy life if the ground we are living on is not healthy?

A Healthy Place for Healthy People 

Let’s consider Nature as a human system. In the 5th century BC, the Greek physician Hippocrates, Father of Western Medicine, explained that every living system, evolving in its adequate environment, returns to a healthy state. What is alive has the faculty to repair itself if its natural living conditions are not disturbed. What is ‘soil’? What are the appropriate conditions for a healthy soil?

We still know very little about soil. Natural soil is a complex community of life where air, water, organic materials (humus) and mineral materials (rock particles) form a thick layer on top of earth. It is the place where numerous chemical reactions happen and materials are transformed thanks to plants and microorganisms.

Soil biodiversity is an important but poorly understood component of terrestrial ecosystems and can be easily disturbed by human activities.