It has often been stated that the contribution of soil organic matter (OM) to the sorption of heavy metals can be evaluated using the surface horizon of a Histosol as typical of soil organic matter. However, components of Histosols other than organic matter, such as clay minerals and Fe or Mn oxides, can also sorb heavy metals. In this work we compared the heavy metal sorption and desorption behaviour of a Fibric Histosol H horizon with that of its organo-mineral fraction (OMF, defined as the fraction of wet particle size < 100 mu m) in experiments in which Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn were sorbed simultaneously from solutions of various concentrations. The OMF sorbed the metals reversibly and apparently mainly at specific sites to each particular metal, in keeping with the good fit of Langmuir isotherms to the sorption data; greatest sorption capacity was for lead and copper. Whole H horizon appeared to include sites at which binding was less reversible and chromium competed with the other metals, especially copper. Organo-mineral fraction is suggested to evaluate the soil organic matter contribution to heavy metal fixation. Published by Elsevier B.V.