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Asia’s soil contamination crisis: causes, consequences, and sustainable solutions: a comprehensive review
Summary
This review addresses Asia's soil contamination crisis, examining how rapid urbanization, intensive agriculture, and poor waste management have created widespread heavy metal and microplastic soil pollution threatening food security, biodiversity, and human health across the continent.
Accelerated urban growth, exhaustive agriculture, and poor waste management have made soil contamination a critical environmental issue in Asia. Given that Asia contains more than half of the world’s arable land, contaminated soils pose severe risks to human health, biodiversity, and food safety. Furthermore, it may also cause serious damage to civil structures founded on them. Recent studies have pointed out that in Asian countries such as China, India, and Bangladesh, heavy metals, including arsenic, cadmium and lead, as well as contaminants, such as microplastics and biomedical residues, are building up at shocking rates, damaging ecosystems, penetrating crops, and contaminating groundwater. Their effects are frequently invisible until crucial thresholds are crossed. This review briefly presents a concise overview of the current research on soil contamination across Asia, examining its primary drivers, ecological problems, and remediation strategies. The study of data from government publications, international agencies, and peer-reviewed research highlights the need for evidence-based policies and sustainable practices to maintain soil health for environmental and economic stability of the area.
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