What Effects Does Soil Biodiversity Have On Human Health?

Soil biodiversity is often negatively impacted by poor land management practices and climate change drivers, which compromise ecosystem function and services essential for human health. Understanding the links between biodiversity and human health holds significant implications for public health and policy. Healthy soils contribute to various ecosystem functions, such as sustaining plant and animal productivity, biodiversity, and air quality. Reductions in urban soil biodiversity elevate risks to human health, but soil biodiversity can improve human health through pathways.

Soil influences human health in various ways, with human health being linked to the health of the soil. Historically, emphasis has been placed on the negative impacts that soils have on humans. Well-developed structures, sufficient organic matter, and other physical and chemical properties conducive to crop growth lead to strong soil. Loss of soil biodiversity makes soil less resilient and undermines its ability to support wild and cultivated food plants.

Soil biodiversity can help boost the nutritional value of our food and enable plants to produce beneficial phytonutrients, such as antioxidants. Consuming plants high in antioxidants and other nutrients improves our immune system, hormone regulation, and overall health. Soils harbor many parasitic species that pose risks to human health, especially in crowded urban areas with poor sanitation.

Soil microbes and other biota provide many benefits to human health, including the production of medicines like antibiotics and anticancer drugs. Ingested soil can potentially supply essential nutrients but can also lead to exposure to heavy metals, organic chemicals, or pathogens.

Biodiversity is fundamental to human health and well-being, as it helps suppress disease-causing organisms and provide clean air. Human health relies on organisms in our soils, which help produce healthy food by improving soil health and nutrients. Appropriate management of soil biodiversity in cities can reduce the risk of immune-mediated diseases and improve human health in cities.

What are the harmful effects of soil organisms?

Pathogenic microorganisms, including fungi, oomycetes, bacteria, and viruses, can have harmful effects on crops, leading to pathogenicity, disease, resistance to control products, poor soil health or reduced fertility, poor crop health or yields, and crop loss. These pathogens are often difficult to control and manage once widespread. Examples of pathogenic microorganisms include Phytophthora, Fusarium, Verticillium, Pythium, and Rhizoctonia.

Phytophthora, also known as the plant destroyer, is a pathogenic oomycete that can be damaging to many plants, particularly ornamental and horticultural crops. It can infect all parts of the plant but usually attacks the roots or stem base. Fusarium, a fungal genus, is widely distributed in soil and can cause Fusarium stem canker, Fusarium root rot, and Fusarium wilt in different types of crops. Verticillium is a soil-borne fungal disease that causes widespread wilting of affected plants, piercing host roots to grow into the xylem of the plant, reducing water transport and increasing toxin movement, leading to the death of plant tissues.

Pythium causes common crop diseases like root rot, often involving seed decay and seedling death. This fungus reduces root growth, overall plant growth, and leads to the destruction of the hypocotyl (the stem of a germinating seed) and main root system.

Rhizoctonia is responsible for many commercially significant crop diseases, such as turfgrass disease, seedling damping, black scurf in potatoes, bare patch, root rot, and sheath blight. Understanding the biology and impact of pathogenic and beneficial microorganisms in crops is crucial for managing and controlling disease outbreaks.

FungiAlert technology offers the opportunity to understand both pathogenic and beneficial microorganisms present in the soil, enabling the design of efficient disease control practices to minimize crop losses and increase plant quality.

How does soil erosion affect human health?

Soil erosion is causing significant economic and environmental damage, with the US losing 10 times faster than China and India, and the global damage estimated at $400 billion annually. Over the past 40 years, 30% of arable land has become unproductive, with 60% of washed-away soil ending up in rivers, streams, and lakes, making waterways more susceptible to flooding and contamination from fertilizers and pesticides. Soil erosion also reduces its ability to store water and support plant growth, affecting biodiversity.

It also promotes critical losses of water, nutrients, soil organic matter, and soil biota, harming forests, rangelands, and natural ecosystems. Additionally, erosion increases wind dust, which carries around 20 human infectious disease organisms, including anthrax and tuberculosis.

What does soil do to a human body?

Soil materials can be exposed to humans through three common routes: ingestion, respiration, and skin absorption or penetration. Ingestion can occur deliberately or incidentally, particularly in children and pregnant women, and can potentially supply essential nutrients but also lead to exposure to heavy metals, organic chemicals, or pathogens. Respiration involves inhaling soil materials, which can cause serious problems such as coccidioidomycosis, acute inflammation of the bronchial passages, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, fibrotic changes, and mesothelioma from breathing in naturally occurring asbestos minerals from soil-derived dust.

Absorption or penetration of the skin can expose an individual to pathogens and soil chemicals, and it can also cause podoconiosis, a non-infectious disease found in subsistence farmers who frequently go barefoot. Prevention is as simple as wearing shoes, and the condition has ceased to occur in countries where it was once found, such as France, Ireland, and Scotland, once the use of shoes became commonplace.

Soil can adversely affect human health by being contaminated either naturally or through anthropogenic activities with chemical elements and substances that are in toxic amounts when ingested or inhaled. A supply of any element may result in human toxicity, even elements that are essential for life. The level of any essential element in humans can be deficient, adequate, or toxic depending upon the concentrations of these elements in the soil and the degree of exposure. Both deficiency and toxicity can result in morbidity and in some cases mortality.

Lead is the single largest soil contaminant worldwide, as it has been widely introduced into soil from anthropogenic sources such as leaded petrol, lead-based paint, lead mining and smelting, and other industrial activities. The effects of lead, especially on children and adolescents, are well documented and have led to multiple public health problems and concerns. Mass lead poisoning has been recently reported in Senegal and Nigeria, where villages participated in informal recycling of used lead-acid batteries and gold ore processing, resulting in lead contaminated soil, with dust from such soil being inhaled, ingested, or both, causing lead poisoning.

How does soil bacteria affect human health?

Soil microbes play a crucial role in regulating our emotions and immune response, as well as determining the nutrient content of our food. These microbes, found in soil and farm animals, start in utero and continue to shape the immune system during the first few years of life. Cornell plant scientist Jenny Kao-Kniffin studies the underground interactions between soil microbes and plant roots, a zone called the phytobiome. This could be the next frontier in nutrition science, as plants secrete compounds to feed microbes, enabling them to capture essential nutrients and produce phytonutrients or antioxidants.

What are the major human impacts on soil?

Dry climates are prone to salinization, a process whereby the soil becomes unsuitable for crop cultivation due to factors such as contamination, desertification, and erosion, which further degrade the soil.

What is biodiversity and how is it important for humans?

Biodiversity is crucial for the health of ecosystems, including those that support humans. It includes animals, plants, and microorganisms that provide air, food, and other essential resources. Pollinators, such as birds and bees, are essential for a third of the world’s crop production, which is essential for the production of fruits, vegetables, and other foods. Invertebrates, such as invertebrates, help maintain soil health and release nutrients for plants, which are then passed down to humans. Ocean life provides animal protein for many people.

Plants, such as trees, bushes, wetlands, and wild grasslands, help slow down water and absorb rainfall, which can help reduce flooding. They also clean the air we breathe and help tackle climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide. Coral reefs and mangrove forests act as natural defenses, protecting coastlines from waves and storms. Conserving biodiversity is essential for maintaining the health of our planet and ensuring the well-being of all life on Earth.

What are the effects of soil health?

Soil health is crucial for sustainable agriculture, reducing erosion, enhancing water infiltration, and improving nutrient cycling. Producers can work with the land to reduce disturbances, optimize chemical input, rotate livestock, and maximize soil cover. Minimizing disturbance events across operations, limiting tillage, optimizing chemical input, and planting cover crops can help build healthier soils. These practices can save money on inputs and improve the resiliency of the working land.

What are the impacts of soil pollution on human health?

Polluted soil can contain contaminants that can cause short-term health problems like headaches, coughing, chest pain, nausea, and skin irritation. Prolonged exposure can lead to depression of the central nervous system and damage to vital organs, while long-term exposure has been linked to cancer. Contaminants include lead, arsenic, nickel, mercury, copper, zinc, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. To control soil contamination without compromising the economy, several changes must be made.

These include avoiding toxic substances in industrial activities, recycling waste products, promoting healthy agricultural practices like organic manure and farming methods, and limiting the use of chemical pesticides. Adopting eco-friendly practices and promoting sustainable agriculture can help reduce soil contamination and pollution.

How does biodiversity affect the human body?

Biodiversity is essential for human survival, providing essential services such as food, medicines, and materials for clothing and homes. Historically, wildlife has been a significant source of protein and iron, while botanical products are used in modern and traditional medicines. National parks provide natural resources such as oxygen, carbon dioxide removal, and municipal water, such as the Tuolumne River system in Yosemite National Park.

However, our dependence on biodiversity extends beyond simple consumption of resources. Biodiversity influences disease, local climate, and resilience against flooding or catastrophic storms. Regulating services, such as ecosystem services like cleaning air and water, climate modification, immune and brain function modulation, and infectious disease modulation, are processes that renew resources and ensure a functional, habitable environment.

These services are being studied for their benefits to human health and continue to identify new ways in which humans depend on other organisms to modulate our internal and external environment. Overall, biodiversity is a vital resource for human survival and the well-being of our planet.

What are 5 human impacts on biodiversity?

Human activity is causing a significant loss of biodiversity, leading to habitat degradation, resource overexploitation, pollution, invasive species, and climate change. This has resulted in the loss of livelihoods and income for many species. The ongoing Holocene extinction event, the sixth mass extinction on Earth, is primarily caused by human activity and has been ongoing for centuries. The event has accelerated rapidly during the 20th century and is often compared to other mass extinctions, such as the Cretaceous-Palaeocene extinction event. Understanding our actions is crucial for responsible policymaking and implementing measures against costly biodiversity loss.

What are four human impacts on soil?

The following actions are considered detrimental: the removal of plants and animals, the reduction of soil organic content through the use of fire, plowing, overgrazing, harvesting, the introduction of pathogenic organisms, and the addition of radioactive substances.