Abstract: Since 1960s, environmental magnetism methods have been widely applied to environmental pollution studies due to its advantages of rapid,sensitive,economical,non-destructive and large amount of information.The basic principles and advances of environmental magnetism applied to heavy metal pollution detection are introduced in this paper. Then, the main achievements and latest applications in the detection of heavy metal pollution in atmosphere,water (lacustrine,river and coastal,etc), soil and other environments are reviewed,including magnetic properties as a proxy for heavy metal concentrations, tracing pollutant transport and dispersal,detecting the heavy metal pollution distribution characteristics and pollution degree,reestablishing heavy metal pollution history, etc. Finally,pointing out that the possible linkage between magnetic minerals and heavy metals is very complex and some key issues need to be resolved,such as the ambiguity of magnetic parameters,interference and influence of other processes (sorting,sorption,desorption and post-depositional diagenesis, etc), relationship between magnetic minerals and heavy metals,interdisciplinary research,etc.