In recent years, heavy metal uptake by biopolymer gels, such as Cal-alginate or chitosan, has been studied by various methods. This is of interest because such materials might be an alternative to synthetical ion-exchange resins in the treatment of industrial waste waters. Most of the work done in this field consisted of studies of equilibirum absorption of different heavy metal ions with dependence on various experimental parameters. In some publications, the kinetics of absorption were studied, too. However, no experiments on the spatial distribution of heavy metals during the absorption process are known to us. Using Cu as an example, it is demonstrated in this article that NMR microscopy is an appropriate tool for such studies. By the method presented here, it is possible to monitor the spatial distribution of heavy metal ions with a time resolution of about 5 min and a spatial resolution of 100 mu m or even better.