OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) · 1979 · 13 citations · 0 references
Heavy metals is a loose term usually used to indicate environmentally "bad" metals. It is poorly defined with a multitude of often contradictory definitions based on density, atomic weight, atomic number or other properties of the elements or their compounds. Alternative, scientifically rigorous definitions exist for subgroups of metals and should be used instead.