Heavy Metal Analysis

Heavy metals are more prominent among all soil inorganic pollutants. Soil pollution by heavy metals is a critical global environmental problem and adversely affects plant growth and genetic variation. ^[1] This is largely due to the fact that heavy metals cannot be decomposed by soil microorganisms and are easy to accumulate. Moreover, heavy metals are converted into more toxic methyl compounds, and some even accumulate in the human body through harmful concentrations in the food chain, which poses a serious hazard to human health. Heavy metal pollutants in soil are mainly mercury, cadmium, lead, copper, chromium, arsenic, nickel, iron, manganese, zinc, etc. Although arsenic is not a heavy metal, its behavior, source and hazard are similar to heavy metals, so it is usually included in the discussion of heavy metals. As far as the needs of plants are concerned, metal elements can be divided into two categories: 1. Elements that are not needed for plant growth and development, and which are more harmful to human health, such as cadmium, mercury, lead, and the like. 2. Elements that are needed for normal growth and development of plants, and that have certain physiological functions to human body, such as copper, zinc, etc., but too much of them will cause pollution and hinder the growth and development of plants. In addition, the same metals, because of their different forms in the soil, their migration, transformation characteristics and pollution properties are also different. Therefore, when studying the harm of heavy metals in the soil, we should not only pay attention to their total content, but also pay attention to the various forms of content.

As a global leading heavy metals testing company, Alfa Chemistry provides incredible services and credible results. Alfa Chemistry is your one-stop-shop laboratory to analyze heavy metals in soil.

Heavy metals in soil that Alfa Chemistry can analyze:

Hg, Cd, Pb, Cr, As, etc.

Methods used by Alfa Chemistry to analyze heavy metals:

Our advantages:

Reference

• Xie, Y., Fan, J., Zhu, W., Amombo, E., Lou, Y., & Chen, L., et al. (2016). Effect of heavy metals pollution on soil microbial diversity and bermudagrass genetic variation. Frontiers in Plant Science, 7(245).