Connecting the public with soil to improve human health

Abstract

Despite the definite links between soil and human health, it is likely that most people do not think about soil when considering human health. There is a disconnect between most people in our modern society and soil, and when people notice soil it is often in a negative context. People care for things that matter to them, and creating a more positive public image of soil could improve human health by leading to better treatment and understanding of the soil resource. There are a number of concepts that may be able to connect people to the soil, including terroir, soil health and soil security. While terroir originally established a connection between those who appreciate wine and the soils that produce those wines, the concept has been expanded to many additional products. It might be possible to provide a terroir link to human health benefits if they can be shown to be characteristic of a given soil environment. The concept of soil health has caught on with many farmers, policymakers, scientists and the general public, thus providing another possible approach to improve peoples’ connection with soil. Soil security is a recent concept that has been advanced as a way to take advantage of the connection that concepts such as energy, food and water security have made with policymakers. Therefore, we advocate a concerted effort to investigate terroir, soil health and soil security as concepts to improve overall human health. Soil health and soil security might have the most promise, and some social marketing campaigns that include soil health are ongoing. Highlights Soil is important to human health. A disconnect exists between the urban population and soil. Education about soil can rebuild these connections. Concepts such as terroir, soil health or soil security might help make connections.

Managing Soils for Recovering from the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The idea that soils influence human health extends back to antiquity [28][29][30]. A major landmark in bacteriology and medical science was Robert Koch's 1870 discovery that the cause of anthrax was Bacillus anthracis, which lives in soil, and in 1880 Luis Pasteur showed that earthworms could transfer anthrax spores to the soil surface where exposure could occur [31].…”

Ecological and human health risks appraisal of metal(loid)s in agricultural soils: a review

“…Since from the last few years, various studies have noted that local and national influence on the agricultural soils are the main aspects to understand ecological issues at worldwide level (Smith et al, 2015;Steffan, Brevik, Burgess, & Cerdà, 2018). Other researchers also studied that there is need to link the problems associated with soils to the public, although till date, it is not divulgated properly to the public (Brevik et al, 2019).…”

Assessment of pollution in roadside soils by using multivariate statistical techniques and contamination indices

“…In the last century, numerous investigations have claimed that local and regional impacts on soils are key factors to understand environmental problems at global scales [65,66]. Possibly, as other authors mentioned, there is a strong necessity to connect the issues related to soils with the public; however, to date, it is not well-divulgated through the society [67]. Therefore, more work would be necessary to correlate the local and regional scales with global studies.…”