Contamination affects every country in the world. Industrial nations have a legacy of contaminated land that dates back 200 years as the result of mineral processing, heavy manufacturing and fertiliser and pesticide use. Contamination occurs in both soils and water at sites where, or close to where, these industrial activities occured.
The number of contaminated sites world wide is thought to be between 5 to 10 million. The majority of these sites are located in urban areas with people living close by, eating food grown in local soils or relying on groundwater which may be contaminated. Australia has many potential contaminated sites. These include former factories and tannaries, fuel dumps and chemical stores, service stations, munitions plants, farm livestock dips, timber treatment plants, oil and chemical refineries, landfills and the sediments of rivers etc where waste has in the past been piped for disposal.
Contamination has a wide variety of forms, but is usually:
- Inorganic, such as heavy metals
- Organic, such as PAHs, TPH and BTEX
- Asbestos
- Radionuclides, such as uranium
The presence of contaminated land does not immediately mean that there is a risk to humans. For a contaminant to be a risk to humans, it must first be bioavailable. This means that it must be able to be taken up by humans through drinking water, inhaling dust, dermally (through the skin) or by ingesting plant and animal matter.
The concept of risk assessment depends upon scientifically assessing the extent of bioavailability of various toxic substances in soil or groundwater, and based on the risk identified, the development of a remediation plan which minimises this risk.
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