In investigating heavy metal contents at specific areas, the method of selecting sampling points is important. A general method is, according to the law , random sampling of zigzag-form in the selected field. In this work, we studied whether the measured values obtained from a certain method of selecting sampling points is a representative of heavy metal contents in the selected field or not. The selected field for this study is located on the lower Yangsan-river; Gasan-li, Mulgum-myon, Yangsan-gun, KyoungNam. 1 km away from the main stream of Nakdong river. The heavy metals investigated were Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Pb, and Zn. The inductively coupled plasma(ICP) atomic emission spectrometer was used to measure these metals quantitatively. The number of total sampling points were 24. We compared the total mean values with the mean obtained from various methods of selecting sampling points.

We investigated concentrations of heavy metals(Cr, Cd, Zn, Fe, Pb, Cu, and Mn) and correlations between concentrations of heavy metals in the sediment, soil, weeds, and vegetables on the lower Nakdong river. Concentrations of heavy metals on the lower Milyang river was generally lower than those of other sampling area. In the soil, concentration of Pb is generally larger than that of other heavy metals. Generally, concentrations of heavy metals in the sediment show decreasing tendency as the sampling area moves toward downstream of the river, but those of in the soil and weeds show increasing tendency. There is no significant correlation between concentration of heavy metals in the soil-sediment, soil-vegetables, sediment-weeds, or vegetables-weeds. Only concentrations of Pb in the vegetables and those of in the weeds show very high correlation.