**5. Conclusion**

Soil pollution is a result of many activities and experiments done by mankind which end up contaminating the soil. Industrial wastes such as harmful gases and chemicals, agricultural pesticides, fertilizers and insecticides are the most common causes of soil pollution. The others are ignorance towards soil management and related systems, unfavourable and harmful irrigation practices, improper septic system and management and maintenance of the same, leakages from sanitary sewage. There is urgent need for a tiered approach in ecological risk assessment of contaminated soils. Generic soil screening levels are needed as a first tier. Higher tiers of ecological risk assessment should, however, contain some kind of site-specific assess‐ ment. It is furthermore important to organize the various studies in a framework or decision supportsystemthatistransparentandusefulforallstakeholders.Aweightofevidenceapproach may be an obvious choice to deal with these uncertainties. The TRIAD approach, which incorporates and categorizes information in a triangle – chemistry, toxicology, and ecology – is an appropriate tool for handling conceptual uncertainties. Several remedies to these shortcom‐ ings have been proposed. Regarding ecotoxicity direct testing would allow for a major improvement in risk estimates. As to human health risks: including biological availability in risk estimates, more use of up to date knowledge about exposure routes, dose-effect relations and combination effects, and biomonitoring of effects are options for improvement.
