Remediating Toxic Elements with Sunflower, Hemp, Castor Bean, and Bamboo: An Open Dataset of Harmonized Variables

This archive contains a dataset collected from sunflower, hemp, castor bean, and bamboo studies for phytoremediation along with code used to parse and analyze the data entries. Data was collected between August 1, 2022, and March 15, 2023, through a comprehensive literature review of 587 studies on the uptake of elements from the soil by plants (i.e., phytoremediation). This dataset focuses on four commodity crops suitable for phytoremediation in semi-arid environments: sunflower, hemp, castor bean, and bamboo. Two hundred thirty-eight studies had data on soil types, elemental pollution, and plant components for calculating bioconcentration factors. We extracted data based on 22 harmonized variables from these studies to create this database to organize results for interpretation and enable consistent and further literature analysis. This archive contains all code and data needed to reproduce the results reported in Ha et al 2025. The database itself is stored in a single CSV file named raw_data/phytoremediation_database.csv and an analysis-ready version in data/bcfdb.csv. This archive also includes four scripts that generate data/bcfdb.csv, perform exploratory and statistical data analysis, and generate figures and summary tables found in the paper.