SOIL CONTAMINATION Edited by Simone Pascucci Soil Contamination Edited by Simone Pascucci Published by InTech Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia Copyright © 2011 InTech All chapters are Open Access articles distributed under the Creative Commons Non Commercial Share Alike Attribution 3.0 license, which permits to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work in any medium, so long as the original work is properly cited. After this work has been published by InTech, authors have the right to republish it, in whole or part, in any publication of which they are the author, and to make other personal use of the work. Any republication, referencing or personal use of the work must explicitly identify the original source. Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the published articles. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained in the book. Publishing Process Manager Alenka Urbancic Technical Editor Teodora Smiljanic Cover Designer Jan Hyrat Image Copyright Jostein Hauge, 2010. Used under license from Shutterstock.com First published August, 2011 Printed in Croatia A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com Additional hard copies can be obtained from orders@intechweb.org Soil Contamination, Edited by Simone Pascucci p. cm. ISBN 978-953-307-647-8 free online editions of InTech Books and Journals can be found at www.intechopen.com Contents Preface IX Chapter 1 Long-Term Monitoring of Dioxin and Furan Level in Soil Around Medical Waste Incinerator 1 Li Xiao-dong, Yan Mi, Chen Tong, Lu Sheng-yong and Yan Jian-hua Chapter 2 Research for Investigating and Managing Soil Contamination Caused by Winter Maintenance in Cold Regions 19 Helen K. French and Sjoerd E.A.T.M. van der Zee Chapter 3 Soil-Transmitted Helminthic Zoonoses in Humans and Associated Risk Factors 43 Vamilton Alvares Santarém, Guita Rubinsky-Elefant and Marcelo Urbano Ferreira Chapter 4 Reflectance Spectroscopy as a Tool for Monitoring Contaminated Soils 67 Guy Schwartz, Gil Eshel and Eyal Ben-Dor Chapter 5 Multi-Technique Application for Waste Material Detection and Soil Remediation Strategies: The Red Mud Dust and Fly Ash Case Studies 91 Claudia Belviso, Simone Pascucci, Francesco Cavalcante, Angelo Palombo, Stefano Pignatti, Tiziana Simoniello and Saverio Fiore Chapter 6 Heavy Metals Contaminated Soils and Phytoremediation Strategies in Taiwan 107 Hung-Yu Lai, Shaw-Wei Su, Horng-Yuh Guo and Zueng-Sang Chen Chapter 7 Biological Remediation of Hydrocarbon and Heavy Metals Contaminated Soil 127 O. Peter Abioye VI Contents Chapter 8 Bioindicators and Biomarkers in the Assessment of Soil Toxicity 143 Carmem Silvia Fontanetti, Larissa Rosa Nogarol, Raphael Bastão de Souza, Danielli Giuliano Perez and Guilherme Thiago Maziviero Preface Soil contamination has severely increased over the last years, especially due to petroleum hydrocarbons, heavy metals and pesticides from industrial wastes and human activities. Even though in general soil quality research is facing an important technological challenge and several actions have been taken in order to assess, remediate and reduce the effects of contaminants on soils, suitable and standardized monitoring and remediation strategies of soil are required. In this sense, in the last decade there has been a growing emphasis on the utilization of residues and waste materials, coming from different industrial activities, in several remediation technologies (e.g., chemical degradation, photo-degradation) and bioremediation in order to clean up contaminated soils. The critical point regarding contaminated soil monitoring is the intrinsic difficulty in defining fixed monitoring variables and indicators as the establishment of any a priori criterion and threshold for soil quality can be still considered subjective. The book aims at collecting contributions from outstanding scientists and experts involved in different fields of soil contamination in order to show new research highlights and future developments in the context of contaminated soil monitoring and remediation strategies. The book is organized into eight auto-consistent chapters regarding application-oriented studies in the field of soil contamination. The chapters include selected topics covering long-term monitoring studies of dioxin and furan level in soils; contamination of factory and roadside soils by hydrocarbons and heavy metals; soil contamination caused by winter maintenance in cold regions; the use of reflectance spectroscopy and hyperspectral remote sensing for soil contaminants and waste material detection; an updated review of the use of bioindicators and biomarkers for the assessment of soil toxicity and of soil transmitted pathogens in humans and associated risk factors; and also a consistent review of different remediation technologies and strategies (bio-phytoremediation) of contaminated soils. I hope that the collected materials will provide to soil contamination researchers, experts (e.g., geologists, engineers and biologists), practitioners at universities, and other interested end-users a scientific basis and practical guide in the field of soil contamination to widen their experience to the presented topic areas. X Preface All issues regarding soil contamination included in the book are significant and I want to thanks the authors for their precious contribution. Dr. Simone Pascucci CNR - Institute of methodologies for environmental analysis, Italy [...]... plot, separates from soil samples, which indicates a clear difference between MWI emission and soils in the homologue distribution Overall, 2007 survey soils are mainly located top left, 2008 soils are mainly in bottom, 2009 and 2010 year soils are mainly in the centre The groups of each year illuminate homologue patterns in soil change with time, and show a close relation in the soils collected 2009... of snow and ponding of melt water due to soil frost Fig 2 Variable infiltration, increased moisture content as blue areas, observed as reduced electrical resistivities near the surface of a soil below a melting snow cover (modified from French & Binley, 2004) 24 Soil Contamination 3.2 Characterisation of soil heterogeneity Conventional techniques, such as soil sampling and core drillings provide more... corer (24cm ì 4cm, length ì internal diameter, Eijkelkamp, 4 Soil Contamination Holland) down to a 10 cm depth To obtain composite samples for each sampling point, soils were collected by mixing five different components (four main directions of 2 m radius and the center) within a 12.6 m2 area Approx 1.5 kg of soil was taken at each site Soil samples were air-dried in a ventilated room until reaching... I-TEQ concentration in soil samples 6 Soil Contamination 3.1 Baseline of PCDD/Fs concentration in soils In the baseline survey (2007), PCDD/Fs concentration in this studied region is in the range of 44.34 to 848.34 pg g-1 (0.45 - 2.63 pg I-TEQ g-1) with a mean of 205.11 pg g-1 (1.09 pg I-TEQ g-1) It is lower than 4.0 pg I-TEQ g-1, which is PCDD/Fs limit standard for cultivation land soil (GB15618-2009)... 2005; Veerecken et al., 2006 As an example we discuss briefly the principle of the electrical resistivity method The electrical properties of soils are a function of the soil type, water content, soil temperature and ion content of the soil water Measurements of soil bulk electrical resistivity are most commonly conducted by placing a set of electrodes in the ground along a line on the surface or in... average distance between Long-Term Monitoring of Dioxin and Furan Level in Soil Around Medical Waste Incinerator 11 each year soil group and fly ash (stack gas), soils points move closer to fly ash and stack gas with the time, especially S1 and S4 of 2010 year It demonstrates there is a possible influence of the MWI in neighboring soil that accumulates with years past By the way, the fly ash and stack... isomer distribution of 2010 year soil, fly ash and stack gas of MWI, % 30 2007 Av 2008 Av 2009 Av 2010 Av MWI Av Fraction, % 25 20 15 10 Fig 9 HxCDF isomer pattern of soil and MWI samples (Av, Average) 123789 234678 123689 123469 123479 123678 123478 123467 124689 124679 134679 134678 0 123468 5 Gas 9.83 29.9 1.88 3.32 1.56 10.4 9.66 11.2 1.27 1.94 3.07 13.0 2.97 14 Soil Contamination The PCA result of... can give some useful information for investigating the relation among soils and MWI emission by PCA of isomer profile In Fig.10, it is observed that 2007 soil spots locate in a large scale, apart from each other, and far away fly ash and stack gas, which means significant difference between 2007 soils and MWI emission Other year soils have slight trend of assemblage together, meanwhile, become closer... the use of salts (French et al., 2010) Hence these chemicals may constitute a long term threat to soils in areas with frozen conditions in winter The second process is infiltration into frozen, partially frozen or unfrozen soils, depending on state of soil and snow fall in late autumn/early winter Frozen soils may create impermeable surfaces and highly affect hydrological conditions and in particular... affected by soil physical and bio-geo-chemical heterogeneities and in cold climate, high temporal variability in degradation potential due to low temperatures during winter and snowmelt If or when chemicals arrive at the groundwater level heterogeneous conditions continue to influence the fate of de-icing chemicals but the general 20 Soil Contamination mechanisms that apply have been widely documented . long-term monitoring studies of dioxin and furan level in soils; contamination of factory and roadside soils by hydrocarbons and heavy metals; soil contamination caused by winter maintenance in cold. SOIL CONTAMINATION Edited by Simone Pascucci Soil Contamination Edited by Simone Pascucci Published. basis and practical guide in the field of soil contamination to widen their experience to the presented topic areas. X Preface All issues regarding soil contamination included in the book are