Approaches to the Regulation of Soil Pollution in Russia and Foreign Countries

Modern approaches to the soil quality regulation in Russia and foreign countries are described. The similarity of the structure of public administration of environmental protection in Russia, the United States, Europe and Canada is revealed, which is reflected in the system of legislative documents divided into areas: component-by-component environmental protection, licensing activities, environmental pollution control, subsoil management, and regulation of pesticide application. The issues of risk assessment, compensation and elimination of damage to environmental components, as well as the development of soil quality standards are considered. Regulatory and methodological documents regulating the procedure for identifying environmental problems, assessing their danger, and developing elimination measures in the United States, Europe, and Canada are developed within the concept of risk assessment. The latter has not been developed in the Russian legislation and is not supported by official methodological documents presented in by-laws. In the Russian Federation, compensation for environmental damage caused by violation of environmental protection legislation implies determining the amount of this damage on the basis of the actual costs of restoring the disturbed state of the environment and is not related to the risk assessment procedure. Environmental quality standards in Russia and foreign countries are set at the maximum permissible level and are determined based on the analysis of the dependence of the biological response on the quantitative measure of the stressor (exposure).