About this Research Topic

Background

Soil science has benefited human health by enhancing food nutrition, remediation of soil constraints (e.g. salinity, sodicity, and nutrient deficiencies due to various soil sorption reactions, etc.), and detoxifying potentially toxic element and compounds in soils. Soil chemical-, microbiological-, and physical-based discoveries are being deployed and adopted in communities and agricultural practices, including (1) using soil amendments to reduce contaminant bioavailability and human exposure in urban and other communities, (2) beneficial reuse of residuals and wastewaters in agriculture, and (3) agricultural practices that improve public health through improvements in human nutrition. This Research Topic aims to place emphasis on soil research that has been or will be adopted to improve the human condition.

Soil can both benefit and adversely affect human health. The combination of increasing population and waste generation and decreasing area of per-capita cultivated land put soils under ever-increasing pressure to enhance food production and recycle beneficial waste constituents. This has resulted in a need to intensify production from marginal or under-performing agricultural land in an environmentally sustainable manner to meet rapidly growing global food demand, both in quantity and quality, as well as to manage our increasing volume of wastes.

Reuse of various residual materials as soil amendments and municipal and agricultural wastewater offers the potential to reduce disposal costs with beneficial agronomic and environmental uses. However, there have been numerous obstacles that prevent the full beneficial utilization of residuals and wastewaters due to the real or perceived presence of undesirable constituents, which has been a significant challenge in soil science.

Humans may assimilate beneficial or toxic compounds and pathogens in soil through direct or indirect pathways. The environmental consequences of beneficial and toxic constituents in soils are related to their bioavailability which is determined by their speciation. One of the major challenges is quantifying the leaching and bioavailability of beneficial and toxic compounds, and to develop accurate and sensitive laboratory-based methods for assessing the bioavailability and leaching potential to better understand their direct or indirect effects on human health.

This Research Topic will provide comprehensive coverage on the following themes:

(1) using soil amendments to reduce contaminant bioavailability and human exposure in urban and other communities;
(2) the reuse of residuals and wastewaters in soil management and their effect on human and environmental health; and
(3) agricultural practices that improve public health through improvements in human nutrition.
Authors can select the specialty section and journal that aligns with the main focus of their research. This collection of papers will include original research, reviews, and perspectives of soil research that have been or will be adopted to improve the human condition.

Keywords: soil, soil health, bioavailability, pollutant, residuals, contaminant, soil management, environmental health, human health, agricultural practice, soil amendment, leaching, wastewater, toxic compounds, toxicology

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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