The Challenge of Heavy Metal Soil Pollution
Heavy metal pollution continues to be an issue in many countries today including the UK. Increase in both advanced modern activities and urbanization have significantly contributed to the measure of different pollutants including high levels of metals such as mercury, cadmium and lead. The presence of these metals in soil and water bodies is understandably typical to areas of former industrial activities. Heavy metal pollution poses dangers and risks to people and the environment through direct ingestion or contact, contamination of the food chain, drinking of sullied groundwater, reduction in food quality, and land tenure problems. These contaminants do not degenerate but persist in the environment for an extensive period of time. The financial implication to this problem in the construction industry remains a challenge with the notably vast costs for the redevelopment of land for residential or commercial use.
Current remediation techniques for managing the problem include stabilisation, excavation and physical removal, phytoremediation, and soil washing, all of which have associated drawbacks to their implementation. A largely unexplored solution involves the treatment of the polluted soil on site and the resultant material reused. The main restraint with this methodology is the difficulty in remediating pollutants such as heavy metals causing the reliance on the costly disposal of affected material to landfill.
treatment of hardous soil
Dunton Environmental have developed a specialist product, Regener8-19, to target heavy metal contaminants in soils. This rapid treatment approach induces chemical reactions within the soil to form stable, inert materials that no longer present a risk to the environment. To assist further, Dunton also operates various off-site soil treatment facilities where this solution can be executed without disruption to current project site activities.
