Research on Soil Pollution Experiments

EPA

• The Environmental Protection Agency has implemented most of the experiments used to identify soil pollution. The EPA continues to set the national standards for acceptable levels of pollutants in the soil. Home tests have been designed to be used if lead or arsenic is suspected to be in the soil. However, since these tests can only indicate whether or not the elements are present and not the toxicity level, samples must be sent to a soil analysis lab to know whether or not the soil is polluted.

Sources

• If soil has been exposed to leaded gasoline, oil, mine tailings, peeling paint from an old building or is near heavy industry, experiments for soil pollution may be successful. Particular soils of concern are those near a busy road, on the site of an old orchard, or parking lot. Knowing the history of the land where the soil is located can indicate whether or not it has been exposed to pollution. Researchers target areas that have likely been exposed to pollution when conducting experiments to determine toxicity in the soil. Such areas are often compared with soils from areas that are presumably protected from such pollution when researching pollution in the soil.

Acid Rain

• Soil pollution experiments have been done on areas subjected to high levels of acid rain. Acid rain lowers the pH of the soil and adds toxic heavy metals. These experiments show that the pollution from acid rain causes the soil to become less fertile for growing plants. Because the higher acidity of the soil causes organic matter to breakdown faster, researchers found that erosion increased and even led to landslides in certain areas. These experiments on soil pollution show that since acid rain can carry pollutants further from where they would normally be deposited, soils not suspected of being polluted may become toxic. Also, the damage done to soils by pollution may not just concern the ability to grow crops. Since the stability of the soil is also affected, construction projects can also be affected by soil pollution.

Microbial Parameters

• There are various experiments that have been conducted on secondary soil factors such as organism populations, organic matter decay and erosion to determine soil pollution. For example, if microbial parameters are excellent markers for soil pollution. In such experiments researchers monitor a myriad of microbial activity to see how it is affected by different levels of pollution. The primary method of measurement is of the biomass of microbes in the soil. These experiments are effective at identifying the presence of lead and other heavy metal pollutants.