Land

The Industrial Revolution's dark satanic mills gave rise to quite considerable contamination from industrial waste products. With the recent dramatic decline in traditional heavy industries there are significant areas of so-called "brown land" now available for re-development in many cities. Many urban areas have thousands of abandoned and potentially contaminated properties.

The Environmental Protection Act of 1990 had as one of it's aims the setting up of registers of land "put to potential contaminative use". These registers encompassed 40 different classes of contamination. However due to the fear of "land blight", the planned registers were shelved.

The classes of land that are now due for investigation have been reduced to around a quarter of the original list.

Contaminated land is a widespread phenomenon throughout the industrialised world. Government response varies, being influenced by local pressures and the ability of the parties responsible, to pay for the clean-up process. There are literally thousands of chemicals and substances that can be found associated with contaminated land.

How much brownfield?