## 1 Introduction  
Nowadays, trace metals and other trace elements are known as one of the most critical environmental issues with harmful effects on both human and biophysical environments. They may come from atmospheric and terrestrial sources. Different anthropogenic activities such as mining, ignition of fossil fuels, metalworking industries, and transport traffic can increase the levels of trace metals and other trace elements in natural matrices such as air, water, and soil [1]. Biomonitoring is an excellent and low-cost approach to monitor pollutants in soil, providing an insight into the influence of anthropogenic factors on soil-plant interactions. As a result, the use of plants (or their component structures such as stems, roots, and/or leaves) as indicators and monitors of pollution, especially in soil and air, has become more widespread nowadays [2]. Some of the essential advantages inherent to this method include the ample availability of biological material, ease of species identification, sampling and treatment, and ubiquity of some genera, which facilitates covering large areas [3]. Exclusion and accumulation are two ways that plants can tackle high levels of elemental pollutants [4]. As mentioned by [PERSON] et al. [5], there are three kinds of plant-soil relationships: excluder, accumulator, and indicator plants. Excluder plants are plants that limit the transport of pollutants to external parts and keep the concentration of them in shoots stable over a wide range of metals in the soil. Nevertheless, they can still contain considerable amounts of metals in their roots. Accumulators are plants with the tendency and ability to accumulate high amounts of metals in their external parts. Finally, indicator plants accumulate metals in their external parts, and normally, the level of metals in their tissues is a reflection of the level of metals in the soil. There are different physical and chemical methods to clean up elemental pollutants from the soil. However, usually, these techniques are economically and environmentally expensive, and furthermore, they can have harmful effects on soil structure (physical, chemical, and biological) [1]. In the phytoremediation technique, roots absorb pollutants from the soil and transfer them to the shoots and other external parts of the plants without showing any stress symptoms [6]. Therefore, knowing the characteristics of the transfer of trace elements from soil to plants (transfer factor) is essential [7]. In this sense, transfer factor values depend on different factors. Thus, transfer factors can vary according to the location, since different locations can have different soil nutrients, pH, organic matter, and clay contents, and they can also differ between plant species [8]. Small-size and slow-growing plants are mostly tolerant and accumulator species, which limits their applicability for phytoremediation purposes. Thus, nowadays, fast-growing plants and trees are more used for phytoremediation, even when they are not hyperaccumulators [1]. With this fact, polluted areas can be considered as a storage of native plants with the ability to accumulate elemental pollutants into their external parts [9]. Puchuncavi-Ventanas is one of the main industrial areas of Chile, which comprises a wide range of industrial factories and activities (such as copper smeller and coal-fired power plants), implying potential risks to human and environmental health in terms of elemental pollutants [10]. Previous studies in plants around the industrial site of Puchuncavi-Ventanas were focused on a limited number of elemental pollutants (mainly copper), even though a wide variety of them usually contaminate this industrial complex (IC). The investigation of the influence of anthropogenic pollution by trace elements from the IC on the local vegetation of this area begins with the study of [PERSON] [11], who investigated the effects of the copper smelter plant on local vegetation and grassland in the industrial Puchuncavi valley.