<p>During the assessment of heavy metal(loid) pollution in vegetables, much attention is given to their total concentrations, but whether highly bioactive forms of heavy metal(loid)s are present in low-metal(loid)-uptake vegetables remains unknown. This work aimed to screen low-metal(loid)-uptake cultivars from lettuce (L), spinach (S), pakchoi (P), asparagus lettuce (Al), green pepper (G) and aubergine (A), and analyse their chemical forms between low- and high-metal (loid)-uptake cultivars in the same vegetable. Twenty-seven cultivars from the 6 vegetables were cultivated in heavy metal(loid)-polluted soil collected from the field in a pot experiment, after which the total concentrations of cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb) and arsenic (As) were determined, and their chemical forms in the edible parts whose total metal(loid) concentrations were high and low were further examined. Arsenic concentrations in the six vegetables were lower than the maximum permissible concentration (As-MPC), and the Pb concentrations in some cultivars were lower than those in Pb-MPC, but the Cd concentrations in all the cultivars exceeded the Cd-MPC. The Lvxiu848 (S3), Fengan (P4) and Chuncheng3 (Al1) cultivars contained relatively low Cd concentrations. The low-metal(loid)-uptake spinach S3 cultivar had more bioactive forms than the high-metal(loid)-uptake S6 cultivar did for As, Pb and Cd. Similar results were also shown for the As forms of asparagus lettuce, with a greater percentage of the bioactive form (45.7%) in the low-As-uptake Al1 cultivar than in the high-As-uptake Al5 cultivar (17.8%). Cultivars with high metal(loid) bioactive forms should receive much attention although their total metal(loid) concentrations are low.</p>