Heavy metals have been increasingly released into our environment. We present here, for the first time, the global industrial age production of Cd, Cu, Cr, Hg, Ni, Pb, and Zn, and their potential accumulation and environmental effects in the pedosphere. World soils have been seriously polluted by Pb and Cd and slightly by Zn. The potential industrial age anthropogenic Pb, Hg, and Cd inputs in the pedosphere are 9.6, 6.1, and 5.2 times those in the lithosphere, respectively. The potential anthropogenic heavy metal inputs in the pedosphere increased tremendously after the 1950s, especially for Cr and Ni. In 2000, the cumulative industrial age anthropogenic global production of Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, and Zn was 1.1, 105, 451, 0.64, 36, 235, and 354 million tonnes, respectively. The global industrial age metal burdens per capita (in 2000) were 0.18, 17.3, 74.2, 0.10, 5.9, 38.6, and 58.2 kg for Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, and Zn, respectively. Acidification may increase the bioavailability and toxicity of heavy metals in the pedosphere. The improvement of industrial processing technology reducing the metal dispersion rate, the recycling of metal-containing outdated products, by-products and wastes, and the development of new substitute materials for heavy metals are possible strategies to minimize the effects of heavy metals on our environment.

Industrial age anthropogenic inputs of heavy metals into the pedosphere

Realization that forest decline (Waldsterben) has become an ecological crisis throughout the developed world has resulted in massive research efforts to determine the causes of declines It is now recognized that no single causal factor is responsible, but that there are a variety of anthropogenic causal factor complexes interacting with natural events and processes that, together, induce stresses in forests that culminate in declines of individual plants and of ecosystems It is the thesis of this article that forest declines involve all biotic and abiotic facets and parameters of forested ecosystems and that the declines are themselves new causal factor complexes that continue to affect the stability of forested ecosystems independently of the initial causal factor complexes Lacking direct field or laboratory studies on these cascades of causes and effects, this article attempts to utilize the growing body of information on plant physiological ecology to provide a heuristic framework for evaluating long-term forest declines

John H. Baldwin

Papers

Acid Rain: A Global Perspective.