**1. Introduction**

Soil degradation and environmental pollution have a great impact on human life, because every year, 2 million people die worldwide due to air pollution [1]; countless numbers of people are exposed unnecessarily to chemicals in the workplace, such as in the external environment [2], because soil, air, and vegetation contain organochlorine pesticides with high carcinogenic risk [3, 4] and heavy metals [5].

Potentially, all previous health problems can be prevented [6]; it has been estimated that in industrialized countries, 20% of the total incidence of diseases can be attributed to environmental factors [7], constituting a big problem for the world population. Toyama, Japan, in 1970, high concentrations of cadmium in rice were found (2.6 and 3.3 g); chronic disease onset was due to rice consumed with 0.36 ppm Cd (155 μg Cd average daily dietary intake), for 58.4 years [8]. Another example was the case of Love Canal in the United States, which is one of the most notorious episodes of soil contamination, where an electrochemical company obtained, in 1942, permission to deposit more than 21,000 tons of its waste; 25 years later, weathering made pollution evident, creating a far-reaching movement for North American environmental policy with lasting effects on public policy [9]. For this reason, there are studies where plants like *Chromolaena odorata* have been found, which is a hyperaccumulating species (100 mg kg−<sup>1</sup> ), and this could be used to eliminate Cd from the soil [10]. Therefore, in this book, the main effects of soil contamination are discussed, as well as some alternatives for sustainable development, with the aim of reducing the harmful effects produced by human activities on the environment.

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
