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The mineralogical and chemical characteristics of heavy metals in tailings and soils is an imperative for potential ecological risk assessment of metals to environment and heavy metals pollution prevention and control. The lead-zinc tailing and contaminated soil in and near the tailing pond were sampeled from a mine tailing pond in Hunan province (China), in which the chemical composition, phase composition and thermal behavior of tailing and soil were investigated. Furthermore, the petrography of lead-zinc tailing and chemical fractionations of Pb and Zn in the contaminated soil were studied in details. The mineral phases of lead-zinc tailing were galena, pyrite, chalcopyrite, sphalerite, quartz and fluorite, as distinguished by the reflected light microscopy and further proofed by the scanning electron microscope-energy dispersive spectrometer under the back scattered electron mode. Chemical fractionations were carried out by the European Community Bureau of Reference (BCR) sequential extraction procedure for Pb and Zn in the soil and the mild acido-soluble (F1), reducible (F2), oxidizable (F3), and residual (F4) fractions were 5.90, 75.24, 4.90 and 13.96% for Pb, and 47.74, 34.06, 9.59 and 8.61% for Zn, respectively. Subsequently, the individual contamination factor (ICF) of Pb and Zn were calculated as 6.16 and 10.61, respectively. The DTPA-available content of Pb and Zn in the contaminated soil were 39.9 and 170.7 mg•kg-1, respectively. The study provided a base for selecting remediation strategies in the studied area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]