VPE 511: Environment and Environmental Hygiene (2+1)

CAUSES OF SOIL POLLUTION

• Industrialisation
  • As the result of man’s technology, invented more than 50 lakhs substances of which more than 70,000 are used in abundance or abnormal quantities.
  • Further 30,000 being added every year. The production carried out in industries and too liberates wastes, sludges that are dumped on the innocent earth. These foreign substances percolate into soil and spoil it. This leads to loss of soil characteristics and its fertility.
• Population
  • Considerable portion of the soil is polluted by man by his own waste by spreading it irregularly. His needs and creeds also increasing and some which he tied to get it from soil leading to over exploitation and loosing its required properties.
  • As a matter of fact, man is trying to cultivate thrice or ever four times in a year on a land in order to get the expected from the land. He is happy in destroying for his temporary well being to built house, laying roads, etc. All as a while leads to ecological imbalance and soil become barren lands due to water logging, draughts etc.
• Fertilizer, Insecticides and Pesticides
  • Ever growing population needs ever demanding food. From the limited land wants to get maximum and achieve sufficiency. The achievement is attained by means of Fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides as supplements for crops.
  • They are used excessively to achieve the creed needs. This leads to the accumulation of chemicals leading to change in pH and other properties of soil and become unusable forever.
• Polluted Water
• As every activity one way other needs water and leading to its pollution, which in turn discharged in a stable , body the soil.
• The polluted water from industries and the acid rain etc pollute the soil.
• Mining and Soil Pollution
  • Soil damage and environmental damage are inevitable during mining. Large quantity of topsoil and vegetation are removed mining. This lead to loss of fertile land, soil erosion etc. Further mining waste dumps also lead to soil pollution.
  • According to recent estimate in India about 20,000 hectares of land has been degraded due to mining and another 55,000 hectares of land being degraded to meet the requirements of mining.
• Municipal Garbage and Composts
  • Corporation dispose domestic wastes on the surface of the soil. The components get of it get into the soil and it become unusable.
  • The major portion of the waste includes detergents. oils, plastic materials etc.
• The Man the Ultimate Pollutant
  • The mad rat race among nations over the world for development has jeopardized the existence of man himself. According to Josae de Casro, “ Underdevelopment itself represents a type of pollution”. So development is aimed but alternate pollutants are incorporated in the land. Today living together nature of the man with nature is no longer exists.
  • According to International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 1972 in Stockholm conference on Environment, “ the war economy in which we live must be converted into peace economy and the enormous savings resulting from partial disarmament must be used to obtain such type of development that would not only be more equitable but also non polluting land”.
  • Bary Commoner’s third law of ecology states that. “ nature knows best”.
  • As a whole man’s existence in the globe is in peril and he has to take a sole responsibility in pollution including soil pollution.
  • F.C.I and Tata Thermal Plants emit and add 1000 tons of pollutants to soil every year.