What Effects Does Soil Erosion Have On People’S Health?

Soil plays a significant role in human health, influencing food supplies, water filtration, and exposure to chemical and pathogens. It is an essential source of nutrients in our food supply and a source of medicines like antibiotics. However, soil erosion can have negative impacts on human health, including increased pathogen and pollutant loads into surrounding waterways, increased dust carried by wind, and the spread of infectious disease organisms like anthrax and tuberculosis.

Soil degradation, which includes soil erosion and loss of soil structure and nutrient content, decreases crop production and threatens food security. It promotes critical losses of water, nutrients, soil organic matter, and soil biota, harming forests, rangeland, and natural ecosystems. Soil degradation negatively impacts the environment, can be disastrous for the economy, and can even impact human well-being.

The effects of soil erosion go beyond the environment, including worsening air quality, obscuring visibility, and causing people to experience breathing difficulties. It also decreases soil fertility, which can negatively affect crop yields and sends soil-laden water downstream, creating adverse health effects such as colorectal cancer, bladder, and breast cancer, thyroid disease, methemoglobinaemia, and neural tube defects.

In conclusion, soil plays a crucial role in human health, with its impact being significant both positive and negative. Soil erosion rates are much higher than soil formation rates, making its loss and degradation irreversible within a human lifespan.

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 is the human impact on erosion?

Human activities such as rain, wind, flooding, ocean waves, and glaciers, as well as landslides, deforestation, habitat loss, and agricultural activities, can increase erosion rates 10 to 100 times that of non-human geologic processes. This leads to decreased soil quality and water quality by increasing sediment and pollutants in rivers and streams. Urbanization and concrete paving can also increase erosion. Human structures like coastal harbors and jetties can trap sediments, decreasing erosion while increasing rates on adjacent coastlines.

Damming rivers and extracting water from freshwater ecosystems can also decrease erosion, altering habitats and ecosystems. The rock cycle and global change processes and phenomena are interconnected, highlighting the need for further research on the relationship between erosion rates and other Earth system processes.

What is the human factor of erosion?

Soil erosion is a permanent change in soil characteristics, such as fertility, pH, color, humus content, or structure. It occurs naturally due to wind or harsh climatic conditions, but human activities like overgrazing, overcropping, and deforestation can accelerate this process. Overgrazing occurs when farmers stock too many animals on their land, damaging the soil surface by eating vegetation and digging into wet or compacting dry soil with their hooves. This leads to the damaging of the soil structure, reducing the amount of water between soil crumbs.

Soils with less vegetation become exposed, drier, and prone to further erosion by wind and rain. Examples include the Sahel region of Africa, West Ireland, and West Mayo, where soil erosion caused by additional sheep population and additional hooves necessitated further funding. Overcropping, on the other hand, is when land is continuously under cultivation and not allowed to lie fallow between crops, reducing the soil’s ability to produce valuable humus for soil fertility. This results in drier, less fertile soil, which is open for wind and rain erosion.

Over cropping occurs in areas with high demand for crops or large local populations. Many farmers attempt to restore soil fertility by adding fertilizers or artificial nutrients, but some countries lack this opportunity due to poverty or lack of education. In South America, soya is a quick-growing and valuable crop, with Brazil and Argentina being the leading producers. Despite some artificial fertilizers being added, the soil is not allowed enough time to recover its fertility or structure, ultimately being eroded by this human activity.

Deforestation is the process of cutting down large areas of forests, leaving an open landscape. This can be done for various reasons, such as selling wood, charcoal, or fuel, and clearing land for livestock pastures, commodity plantations, and settlements. The removal of trees without sufficient reforestation has resulted in damage to habitat, biodiversity loss, and aridity (drying of soil).

Deforestation accelerates natural erosion by removing nutrients and minerals from the soil, as the source of humus is greatly reduced. The natural dead organic material that supplies the soil with its humus is generally leaves that have fallen from the trees, animal droppings, tree fruit, or decaying trees in the soil. Additionally, deforestation leaves large areas exposed to heavy rainfall or wind erosion, making the soil loose and easier to erode.

In tropical rainforests of Brazil, about 13 million hectares of the world’s forests are lost each year due to deforestation. Overgrazing, over cropping, and deforestation can lead to desertification, the spread of desert-like lands due to these human activities accelerating natural erosion of soil. However, soil erosion can also be conserved through methods such as windbreaks, reforestation, farm techniques, and stone walls.

Windbreaks are natural wind barriers created by planting trees that produce many branches and leaves at the edges of large farmland areas to stop the wind from blowing soil away, which can damage or destroy the soil.

Reforestation is the deliberate planting of trees in areas of deforestation, mountain slopes, or as a general practice to plant a seedling for each tree cut down. EU legislation now controls the minimum height and age of trees that can be cut and offers incentives to farmers to turn part of their land over for forestry. In areas like the Apennines in Italy or the mountainous terrain of the West of Ireland, this is seen as a valuable alternative to crop or animal farming.

Farming techniques such as contour ploughing, stubble planting, and time of ploughing can also be useful methods of soil conservation. Contour ploughing reduces soil creep or mass movement along the slope, while stubble planting acts as anchors to keep the soil in place until the next crop is planted. Farmers have also changed their planting times to reduce the possibility of soil erosion, taking place in wetter conditions when the soil is not likely to become windborne in warm, dry conditions.

Stone walls work like simple versions of windbreaks, building following the contours of the soil to prevent soil erosion down slope and allow rain water to percolate down through the soil rather than straight down the slope.

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 soil erosion affect people’s health?

Erosion increases wind-blown dust, which can be abrasive and a source of airborne pollutants. It also 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 affect human health?

Soils are essential for nutrient supply and water purification, but they can also contain harmful substances like heavy metals, chemicals, and pathogens that can negatively impact human health. Studies have shown that recycling biowaste can lead to health problems for humans and animals. Additionally, certain compounds contribute to elevated airborne exposure and health risks in the Western Balkans, highlighting the need for effective monitoring and management of soil contamination.

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 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 are the effects of soil erosion in human and animals?

Soil erosion has a detrimental impact on the environment, leading to the loss of fertile land and contributing to increased pollution and sedimentation in streams and rivers. This, in turn, results in a decline in species diversity and the clogging of waterways. Furthermore, degraded lands exhibit an inability to retain water, thereby exacerbating the incidence of flooding.

What is the good effect of soil erosion?

Soil erosion is an advantageous process as it can effectively fertilize soil by transferring nutrients from the upper layer to the lower layers. Over time, this process can contribute to the formation of new soil in different areas.