Legacies of Organochlorine Pesticides (OCPs) in Soil of China—A Review, and Cases in Southwest and Southeast China

China has a history of intensive application and production of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) between the 1950s and the 1980s for agricultural use and vector control. Since the early 1980s, China began to ban the agricultural use of OCPs and then signed the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in 2001. By 2009, most OCPs were eliminated for their production and use in China except for emergency cases. However, in recent years, residual OCPs have been detected in various environmental media, in large quantities in some areas. Therefore, this chapter briefly explains the origin and fate of OCPs in the environment and reviews the historical use of OCPs and their residual distribution in soil of China. Further, it reports case studies on the OCP distributions and some related influencing factors in the soils of the southwestern and southeastern parts of China.