Deriving site‐specific soil clean‐up values for metals and metalloids: Rationale for including protection of soil microbial processes

Deriving site-specific soil clean-up values for metals and metalloids: Rationale for including protection of soil microbial processes

Although it is widely recognized that microorganisms are essential for sustaining soil fertility, structure, nutrient cycling, groundwater purification, and other soil functions, soil microbial toxicity data were excluded from the derivation of Ecological Soil Screening Levels (Eco-SSL) in the United States. Among the reasons for such exclusion were claims that microbial toxicity tests were too...

Book Review BIOPHYSICO-CHEMICAL PROCESSES OF HEAVY METALS AND METALLOIDS IN SOIL ENVIRONMENTS

Mobility and biovailability of HM and metalloids in the soil, Violante et al. MOBILITY AND BIOAVAILABILITY OF HEAVY METALS AND METALLOIDS IN SOIL ENVIRONMENTS

In soil environments, sorption/desorption reactions as well as chemical complexation with inorganic and organic ligands and redox reactions, both biotic and abiotic, are of great importance in controlling their bioavailability, leaching and toxicity. These reactions are affected by many factors such as pH, nature of the sorbents, presence and concentration of organic and inorganic ligands, incl...

Responses of soil microbial processes and community structure to tillage events and implications for soil quality

The short-term responses of soil microbial processes and community structure to perturbation constitute one aspect of soil quality. Such responses are often associated with an increase in the emissions of greenhouse gases (i.e., CO2, NO, or N2O) and the accumulation and potential loss of nitrate by leaching. Here we describe our recent work on responses of soil carbon and nitrogen dynamics, mic...

Recommendations to improve wildlife exposure estimation for development of soil screening and cleanup values.

An integral component in the development of media-specific values for the ecological risk assessment of chemicals is the derivation of safe levels of exposure for wildlife. Although the derivation and subsequent application of these values can be used for screening purposes, there is a need to identify the threshold for effects when making remedial decisions during site-specific assessments. Me...