Dual Soil Decontamination Procedures

Pollutants actually existing in various types of soil, ranging from rural, agricultural soils to urban or factory soils, belong to a wide range of chemical compounds, both organic and inorganic. The modern decontamination methods were each specifically designed for a particular pollutant. Reagents and procedure conditions targeted only one particular contaminant, more rarely several pollutants, all usually belonging to the same family (e.g., several heavy metals or polychloro-p-dibenzodioxins and polychloro-p-dibenzofurans). Most reviews on the subject presented soil decontamination processes under the same auspices: specific process with specific reagent for a specific pollutant. Unfortunately, soils are often cross-contaminated with various types of pollutants, which make the decontamination procedure much more complicated: indeed, for each contaminant, a certain procedure must be carried out. This transforms the whole decontamination process in a multi-step procedure, enhancing the costs. Therefore, any method that could realize a simultaneous decontamination for at least two different types of pollutants would be extremely advantageous. In the recent years, such methods made an interesting appearance in the environmental science and engineering literature. We wish to review these dual decontamination methodologies that deal simultaneously with at least one organic and one inorganic contaminant in the same soil matrix.