Since then applied environmental geochemistry has grown enormously to encompass the many factors influencing the sources, dispersion and distribution of elements in the environment, their pathways into foodstuffs and water supplies, and possible effects on health and disease in plants, animals and man. The multi-disciplinary and international nature of this work is reflected by the authorship of the contributed chapters in this volume.Progress has been assisted by two major advances. Firstly the development of rapid low-cost instrumental prosedures enabling the simultaneous analysis of geochemical samples for a large number of elements fed directly to computer format.