Pandemic COVID-19 ends but soil pollution increases: Impacts and a new approach for risk assessment

Xiaokai Zhang; Mengyuan Jiang; Lizhi He; Nabeel Khan Niazi; Meththika Vithanage; Boling Li; Jie Wang; Hamada Abdelrahman; Vasileios Antoniadis; Jörg Rinklebe; Zhenyu Wang; Sabry M Shaheen

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.164070

Pandemic COVID-19 ends but soil pollution increases: Impacts and a new approach for risk assessment

Sci Total Environ. 2023 Sep 10:890:164070. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.164070. Epub 2023 May 16.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Environmental Processes and Pollution Control, School of Environmental and Civil Engineering, Jiangnan University, Wuxi 214122, China.
² Key Laboratory of Soil Contamination Bioremediation of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang A & F University, Lin'an 311300, China.
³ Institute of Soil and Environmental Sciences, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Faisalabad 38040, Pakistan; Faculty of Science & Engineering, Southern Cross University, Lismore, New South Wales 2480, Australia.
⁴ Ecosphere Resilience Research Center, Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Nugegoda 10250, Sri Lanka.
⁵ School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Suzhou University of Science and Technology, Suzhou 215009, China.
⁶ Soil Science Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Cairo University, Giza 12613, Egypt.
⁷ Department of Agriculture Crop Production and Rural Environment, School of Agricultural Sciences, University of Thessaly, Fytokou Street, 384 46 Volos, Greece.
⁸ University of Wuppertal, School of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Institute of Foundation Engineering, Water- and Waste-Management, Laboratory of Soil- and Groundwater-Management, Pauluskirchstraße 7, 42285 Wuppertal, Germany.
⁹ Institute of Environmental Processes and Pollution Control, School of Environmental and Civil Engineering, Jiangnan University, Wuxi 214122, China; Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center of Technology and Material of Water Treatment, Suzhou University of Science and Technology, Suzhou 215009, China. Electronic address: wang0628@jiangnan.edu.cn.
¹⁰ University of Wuppertal, School of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Institute of Foundation Engineering, Water- and Waste-Management, Laboratory of Soil- and Groundwater-Management, Pauluskirchstraße 7, 42285 Wuppertal, Germany; King Abdulaziz University, Faculty of Meteorology, Environment, and Arid Land Agriculture, Department of Arid Land Agriculture, 21589 Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; University of Kafrelsheikh, Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Soil and Water Sciences, 33516, Kafr El-Sheikh, Egypt.

Abstract

For three years, a large amount of manufactured pollutants such as plastics, antibiotics and disinfectants has been released into the environment due to COVID-19. The accumulation of these pollutants in the environment has exacerbated the damage to the soil system. However, since the epidemic outbreak, the focus of researchers and public attention has consistently been on human health. It is noteworthy that studies conducted in conjunction with soil pollution and COVID-19 represent only 4 % of all COVID-19 studies. In order to enhance researchers' and the public awareness of the seriousness on the COVID-19 derived soil pollution, we propose the viewpoint that "pandemic COVID-19 ends but soil pollution increases" and recommend a whole-cell biosensor based new method to assess the environmental risk of COVID-19 derived pollutants. This approach is expected to provide a new way for environmental risk assessment of soils affected by contaminants produced from the pandemic.

Keywords: Bioreporter; Medical supplies; Pandemic; SARS-CoV-2; Soil contamination & risk assessment.

MeSH terms

COVID-19* / epidemiology
Environmental Pollutants*
Environmental Pollution / analysis
Humans
Pandemics
Plastics
Risk Assessment
Soil

Substances

Environmental Pollutants
Soil
Plastics