Established in 1987 as the first and only research institution in Poland that is a national leader in researching, monitoring, defining and developing methods to prevent and reduce the long-term impact of so-called pollutants on the terrestrial and aquatic environment. diffuse (non-point), industrial emissions to the atmosphere, their long-range transport, including transboundary and large-scale dumping; storage of various types of waste; agriculture; means of transport, etc., including historical pollution. The Division's research includes: (a) the accurate determination of the total cumulative deposition of diffuse pollutants using natural archives; (b) the elucidation of the processes of migration of pollutants in soil, their uptake by plants, the impact of climate change on these processes; selection of plants - hyperaccumulators of pollutants for their safe, non-invasive removal from the soil through phytoremediation; (c) research on plants - exclusion of pollutants that are not assimilated to ensure food safety; (d) biogeochemical transformations of wastes over time and migration of contaminants in waste pore waters, soils and soils of the aeration and saturation zone to determine and prevent their long-term effects on the soil-soil-water environment, etc. The facility is also involved in the development of standards at the international level (CEN and ISO) and collaborates scientifically with many countries, currently with Norway, China and Lithuania.
The total number of scientific research works and research and implementation works carried out under the supervision of the staff of the department is 121. The research tasks are carried out by the Department within the framework of interdisciplinary research projects managed and coordinated by Department staff, both domestically (in consortia with IGHI-AGH and other research institutions) and internationally (with partners from research institutes in Germany, Israel, Greece, India, Norway, China), within the framework of national and foreign grants (Israel and Germany, Norway), cooperation agreements between the Academies of Sciences (Israel, Norway, India) and internationally (Germany and Greece), as well as work carried out on direct commission from industry and administration.
