Baselines of certain bioavailable and total heavy metal concentrations in Finland

“Total” (hot aqua regia extraction) and “bioavailable” (acid ammonium acetate EDTA extraction) heavy metal concentrations were measured for 90 basal till samples in Finland. The study covers the whole country. The “total” natural concentrations of several heavy metals in many places exceed the Finnish guideline or limit values designated for contaminated land. The “bioavailable” concentrations are usually only 1–5% of the “total” concentrations. The correlations between “total” and “bioavailable” concentrations were significant for Cr (Pearsonʹs correlation coefficient 0.455**, N=87), Cu (0.452**, N=89), Ni (0.216*, N=89), Pb (0.325**, N=89), V (0.613**, N=90) and Zn (0.569**, N=89). ** Signifies that the correlation is significant at the 0.01 level, and * signifies that it is significant at the 0.05 level.