Soil and Groundwater Pollution

The pollution of groundwater as a result of soil pollution has long been treated as a minor problem, either because the necessary analytical apparatus was not available or because the extent of the pollution has been largely underestimated. It was only the incidents at Love Canal in the USA and at Lekkerkerk in the Netherlands that alerted governmental authorities and scientists to groundwater and soil pollution. Concerned as they were with this problem, The Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), together with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Swiss Federal Institute for Environmental Science and Technology (EAWAG) commissioned the present book, the Proceedings of the SCOPE Workshop on Soil and Groundwater Pollution, Cesku Krumlov, Czech Republic, June 6-7, 1994, which specifically focuses on soil and groundwater pollution in Central and Eastern Europe. The book is not limited to scientific issues; it also encompasses the legal and the risk issues.