[en] Speciation of minor or trace amount of pollutants, such as heavy metals and radionuclides released from atmospheric precipitation and water streams have been studied in order to elucidate their fates in the environment through 'in situ' observations or laboratory experiments. The authors have investigated sorption of heavy metals on various natural samples radiometrically (⁶⁵Zn as a tracer). A sequential extraction technique was found to be very effective to elucidate possible scavengers (minerals) of heavy metals in some cases. A sediment with low CEC does not sorb Zn (ii) ions to a great extent. It is thus considered that the zinc sorption occurs competitively with protons present in the aqueous media. Divalent copper and cadmium ions also behaved similarly to Zn(II), which was obtained electrochemically with the ion selective electrodes of Cu(II) and Cd(II). This time the authors investigated the competitive sorption of Mn(ii) and Zn(II) to natural soils using a radiotracer technique, which was considered to be useful to evaluate relative importance of the sorption of each metal ion without serious matrix effects. Quite different properties appeared among those metal ions used independently or simultaneously as a tracer. Proton exchange process may be important for the Zn(II) sorption, whereas a solid-solution partition is supposed to control the Mn(ii) uptake, when each of them was examined independently as a sorbate. In contrast, simultaneous use of those tracers to a soil suspension had great effects on the result; the maximum sorption (A_m) of Zn(II) increased, and Mn(II) behaved like a sorbate which tends to occupy specific sites of the soil surfaces. Those results indicate that the sorption of minor and/or trace elements to natural soils would not be evaluated through a series of experiments with a single sorbate