摘要：The term heavy metals has been vaguely applied to a group of physically miscellaneous and chemically heterogeneous elements, at times being biologically essential or environmentally significant inorganic contaminants, in most of the published literature without any established authoritative or coherent scientific basis or reference. Although Potentially Toxic Elements (PTEs) as an alternative for popularly known heavy metals, describes their toxic nature in terms of concentration fluctuations, exposure limits and speciation varieties for a given exposed organism, yet it is poorly explicative in potential hazard classification qualitatively from species to species on an ecosystem-scale. This has led to a controversy in the categorization of large range of unrelated metal (loid)s with specific mode of action relevant to their speciation and the organism concerned. The aim of describing a comprehensive element-specific identification, characterisation and quantification exposure-toxicity model in context of key factors like geo-chemical speciation, bio-availability, or fate and effect is unrealistic unless a proper and scientifically recommended categorization of differently behaving divergent class of elements is achieved. Hence, an appropriate nomenclatural prospect is required to rectify the inconsistency for which I suggest the term Biologically Labile Elements (BLEs), or simply Bio-labile elements for its biological, chemical, environmental and toxicological relevance as discussed in this paper.
