Urban soils are often contaminated. This is a big problem in cities. The contamination levels can vary greatly from one area to another. This makes it hard to come up with a one-size-fits-all solution. In one city, researchers took a close look at this issue. They collected soil samples from six different types of areas: business districts, parks, homes, industrial ...

Brick kilns are everywhere. They produce the bricks that build our homes and cities. But there's a hidden cost. These kilns can release harmful substances into the soil. A recent study dug into this issue. It looked at 60 samples from coal, ash, and soil around brick kilns. The focus was on 11 potentially toxic elements. These elements can spread and contaminate the ...

Plants need nutrients to grow, but what happens when these nutrients come from sewage sludge? Spring barley, a common cereal crop, was studied to see how it absorbs copper and zinc from soil mixed with digested sewage sludge. The focus was on the zone near the plant's roots and how these metals behave there. Copper and zinc are essential for plants, but too much c...

You've probably heard that oil spills are bad news. But did you know that cleaning up these spills can also have hidden environmental impacts? A study in Iran's Khuzestan province looked at different ways to clean up old oil in super salty soil. They found that some methods might do more harm than good. For instance, using certain chemicals to help soil microbes brea...

Soils near an industrial park in Shandong Province, China, were found to contain 81 different perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). This was done using a new approach that helps scientists find unknown compounds without needing to know their structure beforehand. Among these PFAS, 12 were iodine-substituted, a type never seen before in these soils. Fo...