The Characteristics of soil contamination in industrial complex in Korea

It is expected that the possibility of soil contamination will be high as industrial complex will be treated with many harmful chemicals during industrial activities. Therefore, the Korea Environment Corporation has been conducting a detailed survey of Korea’s industrial complex since 2004. There are about 1,193 industrial complexes in Korea. A total of 60 industrial complexes, 6,310 businesses, were surveyed between 2004 and 2018. Among them, 347 companies exceeded the standard for soil contamination, with a rate of about 5.4 percent. The contaminated soil area of industrial complex is about 383,199㎡, the amount of contaminated soil is 663,847㎥. 282 companies are contaminated with soil, 17 are contaminated with groundwater, and 48 are contaminated with both soil and groundwater. The most significant excess of these contaminants were TPH, Zn, BTEX, Pb, and Ni. The source of contaminants includes leaked storage facilities, mishandling and mismanagement, and brought in contaminated materials or contaminated land during industrial activities. In the future, based on the results of this survey, the manual will be improved so that efficient investigations can be carried out in terms of time and cost, and used as promotional materials to prevent soil contamination.