On Major Problems Arising in the Process of Carrying out Sanitary-Epidemiological Expert Examination of Laboratory Test Findings of Soils in Residential Area

Nowadays natural type soils are actually absent in urban and rural populated areas, and existing so-called “urban soils” are characterized by different degrees of technogenic and anthropogenic contamination which appears to be impossible to avoid. Such soils represent compound natural-and-anthropogenic objects which are a source of the secondary pollution of subsoil and surface waters, atmospheric air, and directly affect human beings. It results in the necessity of keeping soil quality at a proper level satisfying the requirements of № 52-FZ: Federal Law of 30.03.1999, entitled “On Sanitary and Epidemiological Wellbeing of Population”, item 21. Compliance/non-compliance with maximum allowable concentrations (MAC) or with tentative allowable concentrations (TAC), set by sanitary-epidemiological requirements to soil quality and by health standards, is the main criterion of soil contamination. The currently available regulatory-procedural basis is insufficient for effective monitoring of soil quality in residential areas, it has not recently been updated and expanded. There are no health standards for a number of chemical and biological indices of the soil quality, having hygienic significance for the human well-being. The requirements are dispersed in numerous regulatory-procedural documents (RPD) and are often inconsistent. The absence of clearly stated regulatory requirements, work-permit regulation, rules of setting and periodicity of updating regional background levels of soil contaminant concentrations, unified procedural approach to carrying out some types of tests cause certain difficulties in defining the scope of studies and conditions of their implementation, as well as in the assessment of findings. Major problems arising in the process of carrying out sanitary-epidemiological expert examinations of laboratory test findings of residential area soils are discussed in the article.