Bioavailability assessment of contaminants in soils via respiration and nitrification tests

For the assessment of contaminated soils ecotoxicological tests are used to estimate the bioavailability of contaminants in soil samples. Terrestrial tests reveal the habitat function of soils, and parameters applied in tests involving microorganisms include respiration activity and potential ammonium oxidation. For such tests, the threshold values needed to assess the results have already been established in guidelines ISO 17155 and ISO 15685. In this paper, we discuss about the respiration activity and potential ammonium oxidation results obtained from a wide variety of soils with different physico-chemical properties and levels of contamination. These results show that microbial respiration and potential ammonium oxidation have different sensitivities to various classes of contaminants. We demonstrated that both organic and inorganic contaminants influence potential ammonium oxidation, whereas microbial respiration is predominantly affected by biodegradable organic contaminants. These differences might be useful for more detailed assessments of soil contamination, leading to different recommended actions depending on which parameter is affected.