Soil washing is one of the few permanent treatment alternatives for removing metal contaminants. Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) and its salts can substantially increase heavy metal removal from contaminated soils and have been extensively studied for soil washing. However, EDTA has a poor utilization ratio due to its low selectivity resulting from the competition between soil major cations and trace metal ions for chelation. The present study evaluated the potential for soil washing using EDTA and three of its derivatives: CDTA (trans-1,2-cyclohexanediaminetetraacetic acid), BDTA (benzyldiaminetetraacetic acid), and PDTA (phenyldiaminetetraacetic acid), which contain a cylcohexane ring, a benzyl group, and a phenyl group, respectively. Titration results showed that PDTA had the highest stability constants for Cu2+ and Ni2+ and the highest overall selectivity for trace metals over major cations. Equilibrium batch experiments were conducted to evaluate the efficacy of the EDTA derivatives at extracting Cu2+, Zn2+, Ni2+, Pb2+, Ca2+, and Fe3+ from a contaminated soil. At pH 7.0, PDTA extracted 1.5 times more Cu2+ than did EDTA, but only 75% as much Ca2+. Although CDTA was a strong chelator of heavy metal ions, its overall selectivity was lower and comparable to that of EDTA. BDTA was the least effective extractant because its stability constants with heavy metals were low. PDTA is potentially a practical washing agent for soils contaminated with trace metals (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.