‘Heavy Metals’ - What to do now: To use or not to use?

Olivier Pourret (1, 2) , Jean-Claude Bollinger (3)

1 UniLaSalle
2 AGHYLE - Agro-écologie, Hydrogéochimie, Milieux et Ressources
3 GRESE - Groupement de Recherche Eau, Sol, Environnement

Due to our experience of reviewing scientific papers for a number of environmental journals,we strongly suggest removal of “heavy metals” from all future key-words lists, and replacement in the title, abstract, and full text of every newly submitted paper with words like “potentially toxic metal(s)/element(s)” or “trace metal(s)/element(s)”, according to the context.

Mots clés: Heavy metal; Element; Metalloid; Trace metal

Domaines: Sciences de l'environnement

Olivier Pourret, Jean-Claude Bollinger. ‘Heavy Metals’ - What to do now: To use or not to use?. Science of the Total Environment, 2017, 610-611, pp.419-420. ⟨10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.08.043⟩. ⟨hal-01578132⟩