The presence of cationic pollutant metals in municipal wastewater effluent is a concern because stringent discharge requirements cannot always be met with conventional treatment methods. Attempts to improve metal removal are often unsuccessful because a significant fraction of the cationic metals are complexed by the synthetic chelating agent ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA). To identify practical approaches for improving metal removal, an analytical method for measuring metal-EDTA complexes was used to survey metal speciation at a series of wastewater treatment plants. Following these...