ABSTRACT
Pedogeomedicine, a subdivision of geomedicine, deals with the influence of soil-related, mainly geogenic environmental factors upon the regional distribution of health problems on man and animals. Etymologically, pollution implies being polluted by foreign sources of dirt or contaminants in an originally clean environment and ambiance. A good example of landscape scrutiny with regard to heavy metals as pedogeomedical background pattern and by substraction method as anthropic pollution was made in the city ecosystem of Greater Hamburg in northern Germany. On the contrary, soils derived from ultrabasic rocks, serpentinites, and ophiolites are often excessive in Cr, Ni, and Co concentrations by approximately 0.1 to 1% and sometimes even >1%. Due to the extremely large number of possibly polluting organic compounds compared with the already-known inorganic agents, the polluting status of organics is not yet as clear as that of most inorganics.
