Science of the Total Environment 373 (2007) 603www.elsevier.com/locate/scitotenv

Book review

Marcel van der Perk, Soil andWater Contamination:from molecular to catchment scale. Taylor &Francis Group/Balkema, Leiden, Netherlands(2006). x + 389 pp., £45, ISBN: 0-415-40943-8

This book, the aim of which is to give a structuredoverview of transport and fate processes of environmentalcontaminants from a molecular to a catchment scale, isbased on a course on ‘Soil and Water Pollution’ for earthand environmental science students at Utrecht Universityin the Netherlands. It consists of four parts: (i) anintroduction to soil and water contamination (68 pageswith chapters on basic environmental chemistry andenvironmental compartments following a general intro-duction); (ii) sources, role and behaviour of substances insoil and water (102 pages with chapters on solid phaseconstituents, major dissolved phase constituents, nutri-ents, heavy metals, radionuclides and organic pollutants);(iii) transport processes of substances in soil and water(101 pages with chapters on systems and models,substance transport, sediment transport and deposition,chemical transformation, gas exchange, and modelcalibration and validation); and (iv) patterns of substancesin soil andwater (77 pages with chapters on patterns in thesoil and vadose zone, patterns in groundwater, andpatterns in surface water). There are exercises at the endof each chapter with answers given in an appendix, areference section with some 325 references, and an 11-page index.

I liked the approach taken in this book, in particularthe attempt to integrate soil and water contamination andnot treat them as independent processes. There is adiscernible trend to this kind of textbook, ‘Soil andWater Chemistry: An Integrative Approach’ by Essing-ton (CRC Press, 2004) being a good example. Books byHemond and Feschner-Levy (‘Chemical Fate and

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2006.11.016

Transport in the Environment’, 2nd Edition, AcademicPress, 2000) and, to a lesser extent, Schnoor (‘Environ-mental Modeling: Fate and Transport of Pollutants inWater, Air and Soil', Wiley-Interscience’, 1996) providefurther examples, albeit with greater emphasis thanEssington upon those areas covered in parts (iii) and (iv)of van der Perk's book. It makes sense from a trueenvironmental perspective that chemistry, soil scienceand hydrology are considered together. And yet, fromthe student point of view, the old disciplinary perspec-tives may loom large. In this book, it is assumed thatreaders already understand the fundamentals of chemis-try, soil science and hydrology, although a review ofbasic concepts is given and there is a list of recom-mended reading to extend background knowledge. Somefamiliarity with mathematics is also required for part(iii), the treatment here being more akin to what onemight find in an environmental engineering or environ-mental modelling text than, say, one on environmentalchemistry.

Overall, I can recommend this book on ‘Soil andWater Contamination’ to advanced undergraduatesand postgraduates in the earth and environmentalsciences on the assumption that they will have receivedappropriate prior grounding in the fundamentals ofchemistry, soil science, hydrology and mathematics.Scientifically inclined environmental professionalsshould also find the book a useful refresher and maywell enjoy the case studies in part (iv), drawn largelybut not exclusively from Europe, in particular theNetherlands.

John G. FarmerSchool of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh,

Edinburgh EH9 3JN, UKE-mail address: J.G.Farmer@ed.ac.uk.