Composts made of municipal solid waste could be widely used in reclamation of soil-less mechanically transformed grounds. Even though its usefulness, bearing in mind its origin, it is necessary to consider the compost composition in order to avoid posing a threat to environment due to the possible emission of toxic substances which could be present in compost. Especially, organic waste should be monitored, because being present in composts it might be leached and pose a risk to groundwater and plants. In this work the leaching tests were carried out to state the solubility of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in water. The both tests results show low solubility of PAHs, max. 10.4% in lysimetrie test and 3.9% in one-step leaching test.

Deposits used as fertilizer bring to soil both biogens necessary for plant growth and other ingredients such as metals. including heavy metals. Knowledge of quantities and rate in which heavy metals are to be released to soil from granulates is important because of their toxic influence on plants (in the case of high metals concentration). This paper presents results of investigation of elution of Cu. Zn, Ni, Cd, Pb. and Cr from granulates prepared from municipal sewage sludge, hard coal ash and brown coal ash. Elution to water solution was carried out in static conditions with single-stage and tree-stage extraction. Heavy metal a component of sludge-ash granulates eluted in various quantities, i.e. from trace for cadmium to 9.26-9.53 mg/kg of d.m. for zinc. Among the soluble forms of metals the most mobile are (in decreasing sequence): Cu > Pb> Zn> Ni in granulates containing brown coal ash and Cu> Pb> Ni> Zn in granulates contain hard coal ash.

The present study thoroughly evaluated the effect of hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin (HP-β-CD) on eluting of Aroclor1242 (one kind of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls)) from contaminated soil. The factors that might affect eluting efficiency including HP-β-CD concentration, contact time, eluting cycles, temperature, pH, salt content, humic acid, and ultrasonic were all tested to evaluate the PCBs eluting efficiency by HP-β-CD. Results indicated that Aroclor1242 can be eluted effectively from soil by HP-β-CD solution, 81% of Aroclor1242 was eluted from soil by 50 g/L of HP-β-CD solution after three cycles eluting, and the eluting efficiency was improved by increasing temperature and with ultrasonic. Furthermore, it was shown that the humic acid and extreme acidic/alkaline condition both decreased the eluting efficiency. In addition, column eluting experiment was conducted to simulate the practical HP-β-CD eluting of Aroclor1242 from contaminated soil, 18% of the PCBs was eluted from the soil column by 10 g/L of HP-β-CD. Overall, the results indicated the high extract power of HP-β-CD toward PCBs polluted soil and potential use of HP-β-CD for in situ remediation of PCBs contaminated soils.