The full title of this project is" Studies into metal speciation and bioavailability to assist risk assessment and remediation of brownfield sites in urban areas" and is funded by NERC under the URGENT thematic programme form 1998-2001. The project is being undertaken by a consortium of workers from the Imperial College, University of Nottingham, and the British Geological Survey. Innovative collaborative and multi-disciplinary research will be applied to the interpretation of urban geochemical maps and associated meta-datasets to assist decision making by local authorities in the redevelopment of brownfield sites. Source apportionment, speciation and bioavailability of potentially toxic heavy metals will be studied at representative conurbations in the UK Midlands region. Scanning electron microscopy, chemical extractions and soil solution and vegetable analysis, will be integrated with high precision isotopic analyses of Pb and other potential toxic metals in this study. The results will be available as maps in GIS format to provide a generic decision support system for quantitative health risk assessment.