Barnes G. Soil Mechanics. Principles and Practice 1995

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Soils in the engineering sense are either naturally occurring or man-made. They are distinguished from rocks because the individual particles are not sufficiently bonded to be considered rocks. These include surplus and residues from construction processes such as excavation spoil and demolition rubble, from industrial processes such as ashes, slag, PFA, mining spoil, quarry waste and other industrial byproducts and from domestic waste in landfill sites. They can be detrimental to new works through being soluble, chemically reactive, contaminated, hazardous, toxic, polluting, combustible, gas generating, swelling, contaminated, compressible, collapsible or degradable. All made ground should be treated as suspect because of the likelihood of extreme variability and compressibility (BS 8004: 1986). These deposits have usually been randomly dumped and any structures placed on them will suffer differential settlements. There is also increasing concern about the health and environmental hazards posed by these materials