Soil contamination in China: Current priorities, defining background levels and standards for heavy metals

Abstract

The Chinese Government is working to establish an effective framework in managing soil contamination. Heavy metal contamination is key to the discussion about soil quality, health and remediation in China. Soil heavy metal contamination in China is briefly reviewed and the concepts of background values and standards discussed. The importance of contaminated land and its management for China food security and urbanization are discussed. Priorities for China's next steps in developing an effective research and management regime are presented. We propose that critically important to the science-based risk assessment of contaminants in soils is the incorporation of speciation and bioavailability into the measurement and evaluation criteria. Consideration of soil biology/ecological endpoints will be necessary to protect ecosystem health. National and regional/local scenarios of land use type/usage will address residential/urban re-use of industrial land as well as varying agricultural scenarios.

How the Soil Microbial Communities and Activities Respond to Long-Term Heavy Metal Contamination in Electroplating Contaminated Site

“…According to a risk control standard for soil contamination of developing land (GB36600-2018) [26], the concentration of Cr (VI) severely exceeded the standard (3 mg/kg) at most sites, while Cu and Ni did not exceed the standard (Cu: 2000 mg/kg, Ni: 150 mg/kg). The screening value of Zn differs from province to province, and it is 700 mg/kg in Hunan province [27]. Thus, Cr pollution became the main contamination in EPZ.…”

Source apportionment of soil contamination based on multivariate receptor and robust geostatistics in a typical rural–urban area, Wuhan city, middle China

“…Matrix E ik , is continuously decomposed to obtain optimal matrices G and F. The optimization goal is to minimize the objective function Q. Such function is defined as follows: (4) where σ jk denotes E ik uncertainty. During the operation, the uncertainty data are calculated as follows: When the heavy metal concentration is less than or equal to the corresponding method detection limit (MDL), the uncertainty value is:…”

“…The formation of an urbanrural interlaced zone around the city is an important intermediate product during the rapid period of land urbanization development and it always show as a ring shaped with the traffic line of trunk highways, suburban railways, and urban rail transit [3]. More important, the pollution distribution in soil changes in these areas because of the complex source apportionment with the huge scale of construction and the mass human activities [4,5]. Soil pollution in the urban-rural zone has seriously affected the quality of human living environments and has restricted sustainable development [6,7].…”

Editorial

“…14 It has been recorded that the problem stems from agricultural activities, including fertilizer and animal manure use and disposal; industrial activities; metal mining and smelting; power generation; transportation; waste disposal activities; and urbanization. 15 In the second article, 16 Mengxing Lu and Michael Faure explain that deteriorating soil quality has become an urgent environmental issue on China's policy agenda. The authors then identify that enactment of the first national law for addressing soil pollution in 2018 has been regarded as a major legislative and regulatory development of China's environmental law, since it arguably fills a legal void on soil protection.…”