Although the utilization of pesticides accounted for the group of persistent organic pollutants was banned years ago, a count of pesticides are still directly or indirectly a source of contamination in Europe. One of them, simazine is still allowed for use in the United States. Aim of this experiment was development of soil remediation method which could be utilized for degradation triazine class pesticides – simazine was an example used. A method for soil remediation based on ozonation processes in fluidized bed was successfully utilized for removal of simazine from contaminated soil. For the study soil highly contaminated with simazine up to the concentration of 0.05% w/w was used. Determination of the pesticide levels in soil was performed using extraction and gas chromatography. The method allowed 80% reduction of pesticide concentration level. The degradation of pesticide was accompanied with changes of physicochemical parameters of soil, i.e., decrease of pH and a increase of nitrates concentration. Despite changes in physicochemical properties of the soil, the developed method proved to be highly effective and can be successfully applied on an industrial scale.

The linuron contaminated soil was subjected to remediation using ozone as an oxidant. The experiments were performed both in laboratory and pilot plant installations. Kinetics of linuron degradation was determined for both systems. Moreover, main linuron metabolites were identified, and possible degradation pathway was proposed. The soil remediation was found to be successful, which was verified by chemical and biological tests. The half-life time of linuron in the pilot scale installation was no more than 7.5 h. To verify the efficiency of soil detoxification, a toxicity test was performed, which utilized Eisenia foetida earthworm. The test organisms were exposed for 14 days to the linuron contaminated soil prior and after the remediation procedure. It was observed that in the control group and the group of organisms exposed to the ozonated soil, the survivability was 100%, whereas the earthworms exposed to the linuron contaminated soil that was not ozonated did not survive at all.