What is soil contamination?

Soil contamination, degradation and pollution mean different things even though we often use these terms to mean one thing. Here is the difference:

-Soil pollution is when humans introduce harmful objects, chemicals or substances, directly or indirectly into the soil in a way that causes harm to other living things or destroys soil or water ecosystems.

-Soil contamination is when the concentration of chemicals, nutrients or elements in the soil becomes more than it normally or naturally is, as a result of human action. If this contamination goes on to harm living organisms, we can call it pollution.

-Soil degradation is when the soil loses its value (in terms of nutrients, chemical make-up etc) as a result of over-farming, over-grazing or erosion. For example, if a bush fire wipes out the vegetation on a piece of land thereby exposing the soils, and nutrients in the soil get dissolved by rain water run-off, the ability of the soil to support plant life is reduced. We can call this soil degradation.