a system of legislative, organizational, and sanitary-engineering measures aimed at preventing the pollution of the soil by impurities, industrial and household sewage, and solid wastes, for example, refuse from homes and establishments and wastes from industrial enterprises and food-service industries. Impurities and sewage may decay in the soil and reach sources of drinking water, where they act as a medium for the development or support of the causative agents of acute gastrointestinal diseases and helminthiases and of insects that transmit the causative agents of human and animal diseases.
The public health epidemiologic service of the USSR supervises the observance of regulations governing the cleaning of an area, the discharge of sewage, the removal of refuse and impurities, the use of irrigation and percolation fields, and the condition of sewage systems and cesspools. The public health epidemiologic service also systematically checks on the condition of the soil. Most socialist countries have soil-pollution measures similar to the ones in the USSR. Developed capitalist countries have local independent agencies that deal with these public services; there is no national legislation regulating the prevention of soil pollution.