Date published: 01.09.08 - not release date

Contaminated Britain

Contaminated Britain

This evening’s Tonight with Trevor McDonald deals with the issue of contaminated residential land and the potential effects upon owner’s health.

The controversial Soil Guideline Values (SGV’s) that are used to regulate risk to human health from the soil are generally seen as being overly cautious and the effect has been that much of the UK has been rendered as contaminated land.

The SGV’s are currently under review by a government (cabinet office) taskforce; The SGV Taskforce includes prominent environmental scientist, ESI’s Mike Quint who has had concerns over the guidelines for many years and is adamant that the guidelines are urgently re-evaluated.

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Contaminated Britain - Soil Guidelines under the Microscope

The controversial Soil Guideline Values (SGVs) that are used to establish whether there's a significant health risk to human health from soil are currently under scrutiny following widespread concerns in relation to their accuracy.

A major environmental organisation has recently spoken out on this and, although recommendations for future steps aren't outlined as yet, the organization has stated that SGVs should not be employed to identify “contaminated” land under the new contaminated land regime.

At the root of the problem is that the current figures are overly cautious and have the unintended effect of defining much of the soil in the UK as contaminated. This has caused severe property blight in many areas, as council inspectors invariably find that SGVs are exceeded wherever they test. House sales have fallen through as a result and needless anxiety has been caused to families told that their gardens might be poisonous.

Prominent figures from the Environmental Sciences field, such as ESI’s Mike Quint, have been drafted onto a government (Cabinet Office) Task Force which has been formed to address these issues with an end goal of recommending more reasonable figures.

ESI’s Mike Quint commented

“I welcome the opportunity to sit on the Cabinet Office SGV Task Force as I have had serious concerns in relation to SGVs for many years. In my view, SGVs aren't indicators of the dangerous levels of contamination the legislation was set up to deal with, yet due to incorrect guidance they have been used for this purpose for several years”.

ESI’s Mike Quint is available for comment on the subject of contaminated land and SGV’s, contact the ESI press office

ESI Press Office
Contact
Peter Medlicott or Claire Brown on 01743 234 224
peter@spiritsolutions.co.uk
claire@spiritsolutions.co.uk