Soil pollution

Soil is the top layer of the earth, for which fertility is characteristic - the ability to feed cultivated plants and promote their maturation. Agriculture is impossible without soil, because many crops are cultivated on it, from which food is prepared for man himself and for fodder. The extent to which these products will be useful and nutritious depends on the quality and condition of the soil, from care, feeding and watering.

The most effective for agriculture are chernozem soils rich in humus (humus). Soil formation is a long and complex process, which is the result of the action of winds and oxygen on the parent rock, the accumulation of decomposing material of organic origin. If there is even a slight contamination of the soil, it recovers long enough. Therefore, you need to carefully and carefully treat the earth.

Meanwhile, agricultural land as a result of inattention to them gradually lose fertility, the amount of humus is rapidly decreasing. A person aspires to get as much of the soil as possible, not taking into account the proven necessity of alternating cultivated crops on one plot of land, "resting" the field after a certain period of "labor."

Pollution of soil, erosion can occur and not through the fault of man, but from the constant destructive effect of winds and water. In general, soil erosion in recent decades has ceased to be only an agricultural problem and has taken on the dimensions of an environmental problem.

Multiple treatment causes soil contamination. Over the years, on the same lands, various crops are haphazardly cultivated, without introducing into the soil what it gives. Therefore, it is natural that the soil is depleted and can no longer fully fulfill its functions - supply plants with adequate nutrition, filter sewage and natural water.

In order to preserve the soil as long as possible, it is necessary to scientifically and rationally approach its use and cultivation in order to increase fertility and to receive ecologically clean and healthy food from it. For this, it is necessary to observe crop rotations, use progressive scientific achievements, light and efficient agricultural machines, use chemicals as less as possible, and instead use biological methods of farming

Chemical fertilizers and, especially, nitrates are serious sources of soil contamination. By themselves, these substances do not harm and can not be a source of poisoning, on the contrary - plants use them for the structure of cells, the formation of chlorophyll. However, accumulating in the soil, nitrates get into food, and then into the human body. Here, nitrates are converted into nitrites and can react chemically with the constituent blood - hemoglobin. Methemoglobinemia develops from this, a disease whose symptoms are manifested in a decrease in pressure, changes in the shades of the mucous membranes and skin, and the formation of cardiac or pulmonary insufficiency.

Importance of soil contamination with petroleum products. This occurs especially intensively near highways, filling stations, service stations, car parks. And in those places where oil is extracted, its processing, transportation, and the level of contamination of the soil with oil products exceeds the permissible level by dozens of times.

The systematic export of waste of various origin to landfills leads to irrational land use, can cause serious pollution of the atmosphere, water, increased transportation costs and, of course, the irreversible loss of valuable minerals in the soil.