Understanding Soil Science for Safeguarding Environmental and Public Health

Soil influences human health directly and indirectly. However, its influence is not routinely discussed compared with other environmental media, specifically, air and water. Though less obvious, soils could have both beneficial and detrimental effects on human health. Over the years the relevance of soil to human health has been largely attributed to crop production. Nonetheless, recent studies have shown that soils play other significant roles in human health than the obvious. Soils interact directly with the aquatic ecosystems and the atmosphere, thus, cannot be overlooked in addressing environmental and public health challenges. Despite this, professionals emerging from the public health field unacquainted with the field of soil science owing to their varied backgrounds have little or no knowledge of this all-important natural resource. The knowledge of soil will determine how it is used, treated and conserved, which eventually impact human health. There is the need to establish soils relevance in the public health field which addresses issues pertaining to total health of population, and this begins with teaching soils and its impact on health to environmental and public health students.