Pollution from numerous contaminants due to many anthropogenic activities affects soils quality. Industrialized countries have many contaminated sites; their remediation is a priority in environmental legislation. The aim of this overview is to consider the evolution of soil remediation from consolidated invasive technologies to environmentally friendly green strategies. The selection of technology is no longer exclusively based on eliminating the source of pollution but aims at remediation, which includes the recovery of soil quality. “Green remediation” appears to be the key to addressing the issue of remediation of contaminated sites as it focuses on environmental quality, including the preservation of the environment. Further developments in green remediation reflect the aim of promoting clean-up strategies that also address the effects of climate change. Sustainable and resilient remediation faces the environmental challenge of achieving targets while reducing the environmental damage caused by clean-up interventions and must involve an awareness that social systems and environmental systems are closely connected.

This review reports some aspects of soil contaminant chemistry and its fundamental role in shaping the soil–human health relationship. Exposure to soil contaminants can occur through direct pathways, such as ingestion, inhalation, and dermal contact, as well as indirect pathways, including food chain contamination via plant uptake or groundwater leaching. The mobility and persistence of organic and inorganic pollutants in soil are primarily controlled by sorption–desorption processes, which involve a complex interplay of physical and chemical mechanisms. Soil properties, such as pH, organic matter content, clay minerals, and oxide hydroxides, play a crucial role in regulating these processes and determining contaminant behavior. A high sorption capacity enhances the soil’s ability to mitigate pollutant mobility, thereby reducing their infiltration into groundwater and accumulation in the food chain. Soils rich in organic matter and fine-textured minerals, such as clay, can effectively immobilize contaminants, limiting their bioavailability and potential harm to human health. A deeper understanding of how soil characteristics influence contaminant mobility and bioavailability is critical to addressing the hazards of soil pollution for human health. Beyond merely assessing contaminant concentrations, it is essential to consider the dynamic processes governing pollutant fate in soil, as they ultimately shape exposure pathways and health risks. This knowledge is the key to developing more effective strategies for mitigating soil contamination and protecting public health.

Phytoextraction is a low-cost technology with negligible environmental impacts. A major issue at the field scale is the heterogeneity of contaminant concentration since the entire site needs to be treated evenly even though zones may need different incisiveness in the treatment. The concentration ratio (C_shoot/C_soil) is generally used to evaluate plant species performance and it includes for simplicity an assumption of linearity in the uptake behavior, although deviation from linearity has been observed in several studies. This work describes a phytoextraction feasibility test, conducted at a greenhouse scale for the remediation of an arsenic-contaminated site. Since a feasibility test should also provide an uptake model that accounts for plant growth in heterogeneous areas, the investigation focused on defining the uptake behavior of the various selected species growing in a site with homogeneous soil properties, but with considerable differences in arsenic concentration. Among the many models selectable to describe the soil-to-plant transfer, the Freundlich-like approach was tested. While remaining easy to handle, the non-linear model selected proves to be adequate to predict the arsenic uptake despite the complex contamination considered, thus allowing a more realistic prediction of the potential of a field-scale phytoremediation procedure.