Microbial reduction of hexava1ent(VI) to trivalent(lII) chromium is regarded as one of the mechanisms that confers resistance to bacteria. In order to verify this hypothesis, we compared Cr(VI) resistance with Cr(VI) reduction among 20 phenotypically distinct environmental isolates from Cr-contaminated and uncontaminated soils. With glucose as an electron donor, Cr(VI) reduction by washed cell suspensions ranged from 0.014 to 0.305 mM Cr(VI) reduced $h^1$. Cr(VI) resistance of the isolates were measured by growth inhibitions on a liquid medium containing 2 mM Cr(VI) based on their decrease of $A_{630}1$ as compared to the controls without Cr(VI). The isolates had a broad range of resistance from no inhibition to 93.4% inhibition of their growth. Upon correlation analysis, there was no significant relationship between those two phenomena. At a population level, a comparison of % resistant viable counts among the Cr-contaminated and uncontaminated soils showed 19.1 % and 0.4% of their total viable counts, respectively. The difference of % resistance between two site,. strongly suggested that the Cr(VI) present in the soils influences natural selection for resistant phenotypes. However, it is unlikely that the Cr(VI) resistance is dependent solely on the reduction as judged by the correlation analysis.