Organic contaminants in soil

For scientists, there is no shortcut to performing serious soil ecotoxicology. A fate description of the contaminants is included to explain effects; sometimes the effect assessment must be used to point to the presence of a chemical even though the fate is not clearly understood. Details of fate and effects are sometimes useless for risk assessment due to a lack of precision or a failure to link convincingly the fate to the effects or the biological parameters to the healthiness of the ecosystem. This is not a surprise in the single risk assessment case because limited resources preclude an iterative research strategy to reveal the mechanisms.