“…Many studies have examined the concentration and retention of metals in soils and the effect of various parameters on their adsorption and solubility, including pH (McBride and Blasiak, 1979;Cavallaro and McBride, 1980;Harter, 1983;Robb and Young, 1999;Green et al, 2003), redox conditions (Davranche and Bollinger, 2001;Davranche et al, 2003;Qafoku et al, 2003), amount of metals (Garcia-Miragaya, 1984;Basta and Tabatabai, 1992;Sauvé et al, 2000), cation exchange capacity (Ziper et al, 1988), organic matter content (Gerritse and Vandriel, 1984;Elliot et al, 1986;Benedetti et al, 1996aBenedetti et al, , 1996bKinniburgh et al, 1999;Kashem and Singh, 2001), soil mineralogy (Tiller et al, 1963;Jenne, 1968;Kinniburgh et al, 1976;Cavallaro and McBride, 1984;Kuo, 1986;Lindroos et al, 2003), biological and microbial conditions (Gerritse et al, 1992;Dumestre et al, 1999;Warren and Haack, 2001) as well as developing assemblage models to mechanistically predict these processes (Dzombak and Morel, 1987;Haworth, 1990;McBride et al, 1997;Celardin, 1999;Weng et al, 2002;Impellitteri et al, 2003, Tye et al, 2003. From these studies it has emerged that total soil metal content alone is not a good measure of short-term bioavailability and not a very useful tool to determine potential risks from soil contamination (Tack et al, 1995;…”