Soil Pollution Since the Industrial Revolution: A Historical and Geoethics Perspective

Humans have been exposed to environmental pollution throughout history as a result of multiple factors and activities such as industry (including mining), agriculture, and transportation activities. Although soil pollution may result from natural causes (e.g., the geological nature of parent material) anthropogenic pollution sources have been inducing severe environmental changes for thousands of years. For instance, geochemical studies of cave soils in archeological sites revealed that human populations have been exposed to Potentially Toxic Elements (PTE) since Palaeolithic times ( Monge et al., 2015 ).