title: Are plants useful as accumulation indicators of metal bioavailability?
abstract: The use of accumulation bioindicator to assess metal bioavailability has mainly concerned individual species. This work addresses this issue at the plant community level. Metal content within different species from plant communities found at three contaminated and one uncontaminated site was compared. Results showed that for two contaminated sites, leaf metals concentrations were comparable to those in plants from control site, i.e. approx (mg/kg) 0.1 Cd, 0.2 Cr, 9.2 Cu, 1.8 Ni, 0.5 Pb and 42 Zn. Only plants from the third site showed higher metal contents, ranging from 1.5- to 8-fold those of the control community. This contrasted with ammonium acetate-EDTA extractions, which indicated a very high "availability" of metals at the three sites, as compared to the control site. Thus, metal content in plant communities provided accurate information on actual transfer toward the ensemble of vegetation, which could be used to establish site-specific "fingerprints" of metal bioavailability.
authors.affiliation: Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint-Etienne, Département SPIN, UMR-5600, Laboratoire GéoSciences & Environnement (GSE), 158 cours Fauriel, F-42023 Saint Etienne Cedex 2, France.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Remon
authors.forename: J-L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Bouchardon
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Le Guédard
authors.forename: J-J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Bessoule
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Conord
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Faure
mesh_terms: D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D008670:Metals / Q000032:analysis / Q000378:metabolism*; D010944:Plants / Q000378:metabolism*; D012987:Soil / Q000737:chemistry; D012989:Soil Pollutants / Q000032:analysis / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D008670:Metals; D012987:Soil; D012989:Soil Pollutants