Bioaccessibility of potentially harmful soil elements

Quantitative guidelines for assessing risks from potentially harmful elements in soil are associated with several scientific problems. There are difficulties in establishing concentrations of contaminants beyond which risks from exposure to these contaminants would be unacceptable. This requires not only scientific (toxicological) information on the health effects, but also an element of judgement on what is unacceptable risk. In addition, soil is only one of the sources of contaminant exposure, and its effect, and the cost of dealing with it, needs to be kept in proportion with the total exposure to contaminants from all sources.