New test assesses effects of polluted soil on human body

Organic pollutants are widespread in urban soils, originating from activities of the petroleum industry, pesticides, old gasworks and numerous other sources. For that reason, the ingestion of polluted soil by children when playing outdoors is a key consideration for industry when undertaking risk assessments of contaminated land.

A 2010 government consultation estimated that perhaps 20–30 per cent of the removal of pollutants from contaminated land under the current planning system may be ’unnecessary’. Excessive clean-up work could be costing the construction industry an extra £140m–£210m per annum and potentially excluding some sites for redevelopment completely.

One reason for that is that current methods for assessing the risk posed by contaminated land to human health may overestimate the amount of pollutant that can be absorbed by the gut safely. This is because such tests measure the total soil concentration of a pollutant rather than the amount of chemical that is released during digestion.