Heavy metal phytotoxicity has been known for more than a century. Therefore, it is astonishing that interest in the effects of heavy metals on organisms has been aroused only recently. Research in the past years, however, has confirmed the immense damage by metal pollution to plants, the soil and ultimately to humans.

This completely updated and enlarged second edition gives a state-of-the art review on both field and laboratory work. It deals with the various functional and ecological aspects of heavy metal stress on plants and outlines the scope for future research and the possibilities for remediation.

1. Metal Availability, Uptake, Transport and Accumulation in Plants

2. Metal Speciation, Chelation and Complexing Ligands in Plants
3. Metallothioneins, Metal Binding Complexes and Metal Sequestration in Plants
4. Heavy Metal Induced Oxidative Damage in Terrestrial Plants
5. Membrane Lipid Alterations in Heavy Metal Exposed Plants
6. Photosynthesis in Heavy Metal Stressed Plants
7. Plant Mitochondrial Respiration Under the Influence of Heavy Metals
8. Ecophysiology of Plant Growth Under Heavy Metal Stress
9. Structural and Ultrastructural Changes in Heavy Metal Exposed Plants
10. Water Relations in Heavy Metal Stressed Plants
11. Heavy Metals as Essential Nutrients
12. Metal Pollution and Forest Decline
13. Root and Rhizosphere Processes in Metal Hyperaccumulation and Phytoremediation Technology
14. Phytoremediation of Metals and Radionuclides in the Environment: The Case for Natural Hyperaccumulators, Metal Transporters, Soil-Amending Chelators and TransgenicPlants
15. Metal Removal from Sewage Sludge: Bioengineering and Biotechnological Applications
16. Species-Selective Analysis for Metals and Metalloids in Plants
17. Experimental Characterisation of Metal Tolerance.