A laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) coupled with the chemometric method was applied to rapidly discriminate between soils contaminated with heavy metals or oils and clean soils. The effects of the water contents and grain sizes of soil samples on LIBS emissions were also investigated. The LIBS emission lines decreased by 59-75% when the water content increased from 1.2% to 7.8%, and soil samples with a grain size of 75 mu m displayed higher LIBS emission lines with lower relative standard deviations than those with a 2 mm grain size. The water content was found to have a more pronounced effect on the LIES emission lines than the grain size. Pelletizing and sieving were conducted for all samples collected from abandoned mining areas and military camp to have similar water contents and grain sizes before being analyzed by the LISS with the chemometric analysis. The data show that three types of soil samples were clearly discerned by using the first three principal components from the spectral data of soil samples. A blind test was conducted with a 100% correction rate for soil samples contaminated with heavy metals and oil residues. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.