Inland water bodies （lakes， reservoirs， swamps， rivers） and estuarine oceans are widely and continuously distributed with sediments， which are affected by natural and human activities in the process of their formation， and have environmental significance and characteristics related to pollutants. There are great regional differences in China， and the environmental problems are more prominent. After decades of research on sediment environment and pollution control， the relevant achievements in China continue to emerge. This paper first introduces some international landmark studies on sediment environment and reviews the development of sediment research in China in the past 70 years.Then， the main research progress of China in the research fields of sediment environment and pollution control in recent 20 years are systematically summarized， which are the role and effect of sediment in water environment， environmental behavior and influencing factors of pollutants at sediment-water interface， ecological risk and quality criteria of sediments， in-situ remediation of contaminated sediments， environmental dredging and ex-situ disposal as well utilization of contaminated sediments. And the relationship and difference of some research results are reviewed. At the end of the paper， the existing problems of sediment environmental research in China are analyzed， and several scientific and technical problems that need to be studied urgently and deeply， such as interdisciplinary， composite pollution， emerging/non-traditional pollutants， quality criteria， and governance technology innovation， are put forward. The solutions and approaches are proposed， and the prospects are also given.