Cooperative Research Centre for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment (crcCARE) and Global Centre for Environmental Remediation (GCER), the University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW 2308.

A global pursuit for economic excellence during the early to mid-nineteenth century led to an exponential increase in industrial activities. This industrial revolution combined with the lack of appropriate environmental legislation is the overarching cause of excessive contamination of both land and water bodies globally, due to the ways in which solid and liquid wastes were disposed of. Recent estimates suggest there are currently more than ten million potentially contaminated sites globally, with many of these being within the urban environment setting.
Sites range in scale from localised point sources of contamination (e.g. a single leaking underground storage tank or old landfill sites) to large industrial or defence mega-sites. At present, it is estimated that within Australia the cleanup of contaminated sites costs approximately $5 billion per annum. Whilst in Europe this estimate is to be between EUR 50 billion per annum, though within the USA this estimate exceeds $US80 billion per annum. Unlike point source contamination, a regional broad acre contamination includes large areas of land surrounding smelters and the use of phosphate fertilisers (legacy contaminants) and pesticides that could potentially have widespread impact on groundwater and local and international trade- besides impacting crop quality. Once farm soils are contaminated, specifically with metal(loid) contaminants, these contaminants will remain in the soil indefinitely and therefore to ensure a minimal impact to the overall soil health the use of strategies to minimise the fraction of contaminants posing risk is crucial. When taking into consideration the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organizations’s One Health concept, irrespective of the nature of contamination, the quality of pasture-agriculture is a major exposure path to human consumption and hence therefore human health. Per the World Health Organisation (WHO), there have been 13.7 million deaths per year linked to the contamination of the living environment, this making up almost 25 per cent of deaths. Beyond the nonlethal side effects of global contamination, just as concerning are the life impacting results of these global contaminations, e.g., the decline in human IQ, the reduction in male fertility, the increase in child developmental and mental disorders, etc., which not only form an economic impact with the expenditure of medical costs associated to these but also limit the quality of human life to those impacted. Describing the impact of soil contaminants by deaths alone understates the problem, as it is partnered with the lifelong disabilities and suffering of a growing percentage of the population. Although there are regulatory measures in place for soil contaminations in some parts of the globe, standing alone these are not impactful enough to create a measurable difference across the globe, especially given they rarely include all toxins that are circulating through the globe.

In this paper, following an overview of the extent and severity of environmental contamination, discussions will include broadacre contamination, challenge relating to remediation and prevention of further contamination of land and water bodies and justifications as to why we need to stop destroying the very thing that sustains us.