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Soil health to human health: impacts of soil contaminants on cardio-neurological health and clinical outcomes: a narrative review
Summary
This review pulls together existing research showing that polluted, depleted soil doesn't just hurt the environment—it may directly affect your heart and brain. Toxins like heavy metals, pesticides, and microplastics from contaminated soil can end up in our food, triggering inflammation and stress on blood vessels and brain cells, while also stripping away the nutrients our bodies need to fight back against that damage. The takeaway: what's happening to soil quality on farms may be quietly contributing to conditions like high blood pressure, stroke, and memory decline, making soil health a public health issue worth paying attention to, not just an agricultural
The nexus between soil health and human health represents a critical yet underexplored dimension of cardio-neurological disease research. Soil constitutes the primary ecological substrate determining food quality, nutrient density, and ultimately nutrition security. However, progressive soil degradation and contamination by heavy metals, pesticide residues, persistent organic compounds, and microplastics within agricultural systems and the human food chain have reshaped disease risk profiles. Despite extensive investigation of air and water pollution, the intersection between soil contaminants and cardiovascular and neurological outcomes remains comparatively undercharacterized, revealing a significant knowledge gap between environmental and clinical medicine. Mechanistically, chronic ingestion of soil-derived toxicants promotes oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, endothelial injury, and neuroinflammation, while disrupting calcium signaling, lipid metabolism, and vascular autoregulation. Fertilizers, animal waste, pesticides, and organic pollutants function as endocrine-disrupting chemicals, activating the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) to mimic or impair normal endocrine and ligand signaling. In parallel, depletion of essential micronutrients from degraded soils reduces antioxidant capacity and impairs cardiometabolic and neuronal resilience. This dual burden of toxic exposure and diminished nutritional protection provides a plausible pathophysiologic framework linking contaminated soils to hypertension, atherosclerosis, ischemic stroke, cognitive impairment, and neurodegenerative processes, thereby influencing both acute and long-term clinical outcomes. From a public health perspective, compromised soil quality undermines nutrition security even where caloric supply is sufficient, subtly amplifying chronic disease risk at the population level. Hence, the integrative paradigm of healthy soil, healthy food, healthy people, and healthy planet highlights the necessity of transdisciplinary research, improved soil stewardship, and preventive strategies that recognize soil ecosystems as upstream determinants of human cardio-neurological health. Bridging the soil-to-heart-and-brain continuum offers transformative potential for precision prevention and sustainable global health, enabling earlier prevention, more precise dietary guidance, and evidence-based policies.