Abstract:Plant root uptake of phenanthrene and pyrene was evaluated using the data collected from a greenhouse study. Correlations of root uptake with soil contamination levels, physiochemical properties of organic contaminants, and plant compositions were investigated, and the results were used to evaluate a partition-limited model for plant uptake of organic chemicals from soils to plant. Results show that root concentrations of phenanthrene and pyrene dramatically increased with increasing contaminant concentrati...