Global soil pollution by toxic metals threatens agriculture and human health

This dataset includes the attachments related to the research conducted by Hou et al., titled \"Global soil pollution by toxic metals threatens agriculture and human health\". Our study involved the compilation of a comprehensive global dataset on soil contamination by arsenic, cadmium, cobalt, chromium, copper, nickel and lead, sourced from investigations encompassing sampling locations across various climate zones, geological formations, and land usage patterns. Subsequently, advanced machine learning methodologies were employed to identify regions with exceedance of agricultural and human health thresholds. This research underscores the critical impact of soil pollution on global food security and the imperative alignment with Sustainable Development Goals., In this study, we synthesize a global soil concentration dataset for seven toxic metals: arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), cobalt (Co), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), nickel (Ni), and lead (Pb). This exhaustive compilation involved data from 1493 regional studies, encompassing 796,084 sampling points across a wide range of climate zones, geological settings, and land use types. Then, a series of covariates associated with soil contamination were used to construct predictive models for the distribution of toxic metal exceedance, including geological variables, climate variables, soil texture and basic physico-chemical properties, topography, and socioeconomic variables. All variables were resampled and reprojected to match the 10 km resolution grid of the toxic metal distribution.
The dataset was randomly divided into training and test sets in an 8:2 ratio. In order to avoid overfitting and multicollinearity, and improve model performance and interpretability, feature selection was conducted with..., , # Global soil pollution by toxic metals threatens agriculture and human health

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.83bk3jb2z](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.83bk3jb2z)

## Description of the data and file structure

#### File: Attachment\_1\_Soil\_pollution\_data\_sources

**Description:** This table compiles literature selected for the global soil pollution dataset. It presents key details, including the first author's last name, publication year, region, study area coordinates, and the title of the literature in separate columns. Detailed reference information for these publications is located at the end of the table.

#### File: Attachment\_2\_Source\_of\_co-variate\_and\_variable\_retention\_for\_modeling

**Description:** This table provides basic information on variables used in modeling. The first column lists all the variables used in the model. Columns 2-8 show variables remaining after feature selection under Human health and ecological thresholds for each toxic metal. Columns 9-15...,