Heavy metal chemical species in soil in relation to plant uptake for phytoremediation strategies

Heavy metal contaminated sites can pose hazards for environmental and human health. Phytoremediation is an emerging remediation technology that can be used to remove these contaminants from soil, by using metal hyper accumulator plants. For the practical utilisation of this technique it is fundamental to improve the knowledge of phyto-available metal species in contaminated soil. Moreover, plants differ in their abilities to absorb metal elements from the same soils. In this paper results from ongoing research will be reported. Evaluation of metal mobile/mobilizable species in contaminated soils has been performed by a sequential extraction procedure (H2O, KNO3, EDTA/DTPA). Data from this extraction are also a valuable tool to characterise the hazards deriving from heavy metal contamination.