Are Soil Pollution Risks Established by Governments the Same as
Actual Risks

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1. Introduction
There is an increasing use of risk-oriented policies to deal with the local effects of soil
pollution. The risks that such policies deal with are: human health risks and can also
include ecotoxicological risks. These risks are expressed in terms of negative effects and
chances between 0 and 1 that such negative effects will occur


Risks related to one soil pollutant
In practice, there are several matters which are at variance with the proper establishment
of actual risk related to one soil pollutant. These are: the absence of standards for
pollutants, neglect of background exposure, neglect of routes of exposure to soil
pollution, neglect of available dose- effect studies and neglect of biological availability.
These will now be discussed in more detail.

2.1. Absence of quality standards
When data regarding soil pollutants are available, they should be compared with quality
standards reflecting maximum tolerable risk of exposure. However, such standards are
not always in place. For instance, of the volatile organic carbon compounds detected in
groundwater samples by the US Geological Service, 21 were unregulated- with no
standards in place [16].