Review: Assessment of the Doable Utilisation of Dendrochronology as an Element Tracer Technology in Soils Artificially Contaminated with Heavy Metals

During the past decade, considerable concern has been expressed by environmental scientists over the increasing levels of a range of toxic elements in the environment. Among the most potentially hazardous are the so-called ‘heavy metals’, a term applied to cover a range of transition elements, including copper, zinc and nickel and other elements such as cadmium, mercury and lead. Acutely toxic levels of these metals rarely occur, but ample evidence is available which demonstrates their increasing occurrence in many organisms.