Lin Cheng-fang, an associate professor of environmental engineering at Taiwan University, explains that "heavy metals" is no more than the name used by chemists for those metals in the periodic table that are comparatively heavy. It is especially applied to such metals that are used most frequently in modern industrial manufacturing, such as nickel, chrome, copper, zinc, lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic.
台灣大學環境工程學研究所副教授林正芳解釋，重金屬，只不過是學界用來稱呼「化學元素周期表」上，比重較大的金屬元素，尤其是指在近代工業製程中被使用最多的鎳、鉻、銅、鋅、鉛、鎘、與汞等幾種元素。