Soil Pollution Prevention and Control Urgently Needs a Legal Basis

Soil legislation that has long attracted outside attention has made new progress. Recently, the Department of Ecology of the Ministry of Environmental Protection held a symposium with soil remediation enterprises to solicit opinions for the drafting of the Soil Environmental Protection Law. A relevant official of the Department of Ecology of the Ministry of Environmental Protection said that the next step will be to strengthen on-site research on soil legislation, actively improve the draft law, and advance soil legislation in an orderly manner.

Soothing the Wounds of the Earth: Soil Pollution Prevention and Control Urgently Needs “A Legal Basis”

Land contains all things and nurtures life, and is hailed as the mother of humanity. However, in recent years, along with the rapid development of China's industrialization, the earth has continuously been harmed by various types of pollution. Food and drug safety incidents caused merely by insufficient soil pollution prevention and control and weak environmental supervision have occurred frequently. Since 2008, more than 100 major pollution accidents have occurred nationwide. At present, the state of land pollution in China is severe, and its causes are very complex, forming a lamentable “wound of the earth.”

Industry insiders explain that soil pollution refers to the phenomenon in which substances with physiological toxicity or excessive plant nutrient elements enter the soil, causing deterioration of soil properties and disruption of plant physiological functions. In addition, soil pollution can cause changes in soil composition, structure, and function, thereby affecting the normal growth and development of plants, causing harmful substances to accumulate in plants and harm human and animal health through the food chain, or causing pollutants to transfer to other places through surface runoff and soil wind erosion. Soil has a certain self-purification capacity, but once soil is polluted, it is very difficult to restore, especially pollution by heavy metals.

One-sixth of the Nation's Cultivated Land Is Polluted by Heavy Metals

From the incident of cadmium-exceeding rice in Hunan, people learned that a large amount of cultivated land in Hunan had long been polluted by heavy metals.

In recent years, news about heavy metal pollution of cultivated land has been incessant. Zhang Weili, vice chairman of the Soil Science Society of China, who has long paid attention to China's soil pollution issues, once said that at present, China's soil pollution is showing an increasingly worsening trend, and the situation for prevention and control is very severe.

According to media reports, 300 million mu of cultivated land nationwide is under the threat of heavy metal pollution, accounting for 1/6 of the nation's total farmland. Documents from the Ministry of Environmental Protection show that in sample monitoring of harmful heavy metals in the soil of 300,000 hectares of basic farmland protection areas in China, 36,000 hectares of soil exceeded heavy metal standards, with an exceeding rate of 12.1%. Statistics from the Ministry of Land and Resources show that more than 10% of the nation's cultivated land area is already polluted by heavy metals.

At the same time, cultivated land is severely affected by heavy metal pollution. Chen Shibao, a researcher at the Institute of Natural Resources and Regional Planning of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said that the direct consequence of heavy metal pollution of cultivated land is a decline in cultivated land quality, leading to a decline in the quality and safety of agricultural products, restricted exports, and potential harm to human health.

A statistic from the environmental protection department shows that up to 12 million tons of grain nationwide is polluted by heavy metals each year, causing direct economic losses of more than 20 billion yuan.

“China's soil pollution is now more severe than that of all other countries, and the increasingly worsening pollution trend may continue for another 30 years.” Pan Genxing, a Chinese soil science expert and professor at Nanjing Agricultural University, once made such an assertion. He said that not only is pollution worsening, but it is also transferring and spreading.

Where Does the Pollution Come From

Human activities such as industry and mining and agricultural production, as well as high natural background values, are the main causes of soil pollution or exceeding standards.

Waste gas, wastewater, and waste residue discharged in the production and operation activities of industrial and mining enterprises are the main “killers” of soil. Among them, the piling of various solid wastes such as tailings slag and hazardous waste causes pollution of the surrounding soil. Among 1,672 soil sampling points surveyed in 70 mining areas, 33.4% exceeded standards. In addition, automobile exhaust emissions cause pollution by heavy metals such as lead and zinc and by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in soil on both sides of major traffic routes. Among 1,578 soil sampling points surveyed on both sides of 267 trunk highways, 20.3% exceeded standards, generally concentrated within 150 meters on both sides of the highways.

In addition, agricultural production activities are an important cause of cultivated land soil pollution. Sewage irrigation, irrational use of agricultural inputs such as chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and agricultural film, as well as livestock and poultry breeding, lead to cultivated land soil pollution. Survey results show that compared with forest land, grassland, and unused land, cultivated land has the highest rate of soil sampling points exceeding standards, reaching 19.4%, among which the proportions of slightly, mildly, moderately, and severely polluted points were 13.7%, 2.8%, 1.8%, and 1.1%, respectively. The main pollutants are cadmium, nickel, copper, arsenic, mercury, lead, DDT, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. In addition, high natural background values are the reason for heavy metal exceedances in the soil of some regions and river basins.