Soil pollution and soil protection

This book was compiled from lecture handouts prepared for the international postgraduate course on soil quality, entitled 'Soil Pollution and Soil Protection' given jointly by the universities of Wageningen (The Netherlands), Gent and Leuven (Belgium), under the auspices of the international Training Centre (PHLO) of Wageningen Agricultural University.Of the three environmental compartments air, water and soil, it is soil that varies most in composition under natural conditions. The effects of chemical degradation of soil usually referred to as 'soil pollution', depend on interactions between soil constituents and pollutants and also on the relatively large buffering capacity of soil. It is therefore very difficult to evaluate soil quality quantitatively, yet such evaluation is a prerequisite for formulating policy and legislation to prevent soil pollution and restore soil quality. The book therefore aims to provide basic information to aid understanding of the complex problem of soil quality and its evaluation. Its intended readers are graduates who are professionally involved in soil quality and have to deal with problems of soil protection in the context of education, research, policy making or consultancy

Beter laat dan nooit

Rede Wageningen 14 september 200

The interaction of certain inorganic anions with clays and soils

Interaction between anions and soil colloids was governed by 2 antagonistic processes, anion exclusion and positive anion adsorption. The predominantly negative charge on the colloids caused anion repulsion; positively charged sites and chemisorption resulted in positive adsorption.Experimentally determined adsorption was the resultant of the 2 processes and yielded true net adsorption by correction for continuous anion exclusion.Assuming the Gouy Chapman theory of the electric double layer, de Haan calculated exclusion as the apparent distance from the colloid surface free from anions of different valency. The method was valid for systems containing monovalent and divalent cations and anions with an approximation for trivalent anions, and was extended to interacting double layers.The product of apparent distance of exclusion and of the colloid's specific surface was the volume of exclusion (V ex ), the same as the experimental adsorption value. Thus anion exclusion measurements yielded values for the colloid's specific surface. V ex was determined by a tracer method for Cl -, S0 42-, and P0 43-, and by potentiometric titration for Cl -. Adsorption of different anions could be determined simultaneously.Theoretical derivations were confirmed in experiments with fairly pure clays and in 12 Dutch soils, with special attention to phosphate adsorption. The correction for anion exclusion allowed refined measurements of anion adsorption and explained the bonding mechanisms between anions and soil colloids