Where is cadmium found in nature

In paints, cadmium sulfide lends a yellow hue, while cadmium selenide produces colors ranging from yellow to red. Control rods and shields for nuclear reactors may contain cadmium because of its ability to absorb emitted particles. Cadmium is also used to make phosphor compounds that glow when bombarded with electrons, the technology that produces the image in a television tube.

Though trace amounts of many metals are essential for the health of living things, there is no scientific evidence showing a nutritional role for cadmium. Humans can be harmed by a single large exposure to cadmium, and by long-term exposure to higher-than-usual concentrations. Until the mids, cadmium had few industrial uses. People were rarely exposed to concentrated doses of cadmium and the metal was not recognized as a health concern. But as new uses for cadmium were found, and as the industrial processes that produce the metal increased worldwide, the toxic effects of cadmium began to surface.

Some of the earliest cases of cadmium poisoning were reported in Belgium in in workers who inhaled cadmium dust as a result of polishing silver with cadmium carbonate. This kind of exposure can cause severe respiratory distress, emphysema, and even death. Farmers in the region used the run-off to irrigate rice patties and other crops. Cadmium quickly became concentrated in the crops, and before long local women began to experience pain in their bones and joints, which eventually became so excruciating that they were bed-ridden.

The cadmium, it was later found, had interfered with calcium metabolism, leading to reduction in calcium content and the density and strength of their bones. Simple movements, in some cases, caused the weakened bones to break. Removing cadmium from industrial wastewater halted the incidence of this extremely painful type of chronic cadmium poisoning and no new cases have been recorded in Japan since.

Itai-itai occurred primarily in post-menopausal women who had several children and was probably related as well to vitamin D deficiencies, hormonal status and other factors. The toxicity of cadmium is attributed, in part, to its ability to accumulate in living things. Cadmium is rare in nature and consequently plants and animals have not evolved with efficient means of metabolizing large amounts of the metal.

Small amounts of the metal are bound up by the protein metallothionein and are removed from the body, but since organisms are unable to isolate and remove large amounts efficiently, long-term exposure to high levels can result in accumulation in body tissues.

Under these conditions, cadmium can remain in the body for years. Most of the metal accumulates in the bones, liver and kidneys, where it can damage the functioning of those organs. Cadmium can also bioaccumulate in the ecosystem.

Crops treated with cadmium-containing fertilizer or commercial sludge can accumulate above-normal cadmium concentrations and pass them on through the food web to higher organisms such as livestock and humans as in the case of the Kamioka mine in Japan.

Some organisms absorb cadmium better than others. Among plants, staple foods such as wheat, rice and potatoes have been shown to accumulate higher amounts of cadmium. The overall highest levels of cadmium in food can be expected in the livers and kidneys of animals and in shellfish such as oysters and clams. According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, foods account for more than 90 percent of human exposure to cadmium.

On average, people consume about 30 micrograms of cadmium daily through a normal diet, absorbing 1 to 3 micrograms. There is currently no evidence that these trace levels pose a hazard to healthy adults. Cigarette smokers, however, typically sustain significantly higher exposure. Cadmium inhaled through cigarette smoke is more easily taken up by the body than cadmium in food or water.

From 40 to 60 percent of the cadmium inhaled in smoke is absorbed into the bloodstream as opposed to the 5 to 10 percent absorbed through foods. Each cigarette contains roughly 1 to 2 micrograms of cadmium, and smokers absorb an additional 1 to 3 micrograms of cadmium into their systems daily for every pack they smoke.

Studies have shown that smoking more than 20 cigarettes daily can increase cadmium levels in the body tenfold. In Japan, zinc mining operations contaminated the local water supplies with cadmium.

Local farmers used that water for irrigation of their fields. The soil became contaminated with cadmium which led to the uptake of cadmium into their rice Jarup Skip directly to site content Skip directly to page options Skip directly to A-Z link. Environmental Health and Medicine Education. Section Navigation. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Syndicate.

Cadmium Toxicity. Where is Cadmium Found? Minus Related Pages. On This Page. Learning Objective. Upon completion of this section, you will be able to identify sources of cadmium in the natural environment, and describe how man-made uses of cadmium disperse it through the environment. Most cadmium ore greenockite : exists as cadmium sulfide, is refined during zinc production, and occurs in association with zinc.

Sources of Cadmium. Cadmium has been widely dispersed into the environment through the air by its mining and smelting as well as by other man-made routes: usage of phosphate fertilizers, presence in sewage sludge, and various industrial uses such as NiCd batteries, plating, pigments and plastics ATSDR The images may not be posted on any website, shared in any disc library, image storage mechanism, network system or similar arrangement.

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Jump to main content. Periodic Table. Glossary Allotropes Some elements exist in several different structural forms, called allotropes. Discovery date Discovered by Friedrich Stromeyer Origin of the name The name is derived from the Latin 'cadmia', the name for the mineral calamine.

Allotropes -. Glossary Group A vertical column in the periodic table. Fact box. Group 12 Melting point Glossary Image explanation Murray Robertson is the artist behind the images which make up Visual Elements. Appearance The description of the element in its natural form. Biological role The role of the element in humans, animals and plants. Natural abundance Where the element is most commonly found in nature, and how it is sourced commercially.

Uses and properties. Image explanation. Cadmium is a silvery metal with a bluish tinge to its surface. Cadmium is a poison and is known to cause birth defects and cancer. As a result, there are moves to limit its use. However, they are gradually being phased out and replaced with nickel metal hydride batteries. Cadmium was often used to electroplate steel and protect it from corrosion.

It is still used today to protect critical components of aeroplanes and oil platforms. Other past uses of cadmium included phosphors in cathode ray tube colour TV sets, and yellow, orange and red pigments. Biological role. Cadmium is toxic, carcinogenic and teratogenic disturbs the development of an embryo or foetus.

On average we take in as little as 0. But it accumulates in the body, and so on average we store about 50 milligrams. Before the dangers of cadmium were fully understood, welders and other metal workers were at risk of becoming ill. In some welders working on the Severn Road Bridge became ill from breathing in cadmium fumes. Natural abundance. The only mineral containing significant quantities of cadmium is greenockite cadmium sulfide.

It is also present in small amounts in sphalerite. Almost all commercially produced cadmium is obtained as a by-product of zinc refining. Help text not available for this section currently. Elements and Periodic Table History. In the early s, the apothecaries of Hanover, Germany, made zinc oxide by heating a naturally occurring form of zinc carbonate called cadmia.

This he separated as its brown oxide and, by heating it with lampblack carbon , he produced a sample of a blue-grey metal which he named cadmium after the name for the mineral. That was in Meanwhile two other Germans, Karl Meissner in Halle, and Karl Karsten in Berlin, were working on the same problem and announced their discovery of cadmium the following year.

Atomic data. Glossary Common oxidation states The oxidation state of an atom is a measure of the degree of oxidation of an atom. Oxidation states and isotopes. Glossary Data for this section been provided by the British Geological Survey. Relative supply risk An integrated supply risk index from 1 very low risk to 10 very high risk. Recycling rate The percentage of a commodity which is recycled.

Substitutability The availability of suitable substitutes for a given commodity. Reserve distribution The percentage of the world reserves located in the country with the largest reserves. Political stability of top producer A percentile rank for the political stability of the top producing country, derived from World Bank governance indicators. Political stability of top reserve holder A percentile rank for the political stability of the country with the largest reserves, derived from World Bank governance indicators.

Supply risk. Relative supply risk 6. Young's modulus A measure of the stiffness of a substance. Shear modulus A measure of how difficult it is to deform a material. Bulk modulus A measure of how difficult it is to compress a substance.

Vapour pressure A measure of the propensity of a substance to evaporate. Pressure and temperature data — advanced. Listen to Cadmium Podcast Transcript :. You're listening to Chemistry in its element brought to you by Chemistry World , the magazine of the Royal Society of Chemistry. I cannot imagine that this is all someone would be saying if they were unfortunate enough to be stricken with the disease of the same name. That's right, the ouch-ouch disease.

From the description, it seems like the pain would be intense enough to make me say a lot more than just ouch-ouch. Itai-Itai is the original Japanese for ouch ouch. The disease results from excessive cadmium poisoning and was first reported in a small town about miles north west of Tokyo. There, rice grown in cadmium contaminated soils had more than 10 times the cadmium content than normal rice.

Excess cadmium began to interfere with calcium deposition in bones. The ouch-ouch-ness of this disease resulted from weak and brittle bones subject to collapse due to high porosity. It is amazing to think that cadmium was able to accumulate to such high levels that it could overwhelm the human body's already intense defenses against it. It's an insidious little, I mean, heavy metal. Cadmium sits right below zinc on the periodic table and therefore shares many of its same chemical properties.

In the environment it is distributed nearly everywhere we find zinc and therefore when we mine zinc, we consequently mine cadmium. When we galvanize zinc treat a nail or some other bit of steel, a little cadmium comes along for the ride. Think for a minute about how important galvanization is to the industrialized world.