Cadmium is considered an important toxicant of major environmental and occupational concern. It can contaminate water, soil, and the atmosphere through coal mining, beneficiation, combustion, etc. This paper is based on the published literature, especially those data reported during the recent 10 years, including 2999 individual samples from 116 coalfields or mines in 26 provinces in China. The...

Various metals, in trace amounts, are essential for proper biological functioning. However, there are many heavy metals that are toxic and exposure to their high intake may result in serious adverse effects on health. Cadmium (Cd) is one of the most toxic pollutants in environment. Accumulation of Cd in blood affects the kidney and liver. The toxicity of cadmium is much affected by deficiency o...

Intake of toxic cadmium (Cd) from rice caused Itai-itai disease in the past and it is still a threat for human health. Therefore, control of the accumulation of Cd from soil is an important food-safety issue, but the molecular mechanism for the control is unknown. Herein, we report a gene (OsHMA3) responsible for low Cd accumulation in rice that was isolated from a mapping population derived fr...

Bioaccumulation of potentially toxic metals by litter-feeding invertebrates is determined not only by the concentration of metal in the diet, but also by the flux of food through the body. Nitrogen and phosphorus are the main elements regulating food consumption and so are expected to affect the bioaccumulation of trace elements such as cadmium. To test this idea, we applied a three-factor orth...

Cadmium is a hazardous heavy metal existing ubiquitously in the environment, but the mechanism of cadmium transport into mammalian cells has been poorly understood. Recently, we have established a cadmium-resistant cell line (Cd-rB5) from immortalized metallothionein-null mouse cells, and found that Cd-rB5 cells exhibited a marked decrease in cadmium uptake. To investigate the mechanism of alte...

Cadmium is a dangerous metal distributed widely in the environment. Members of our laboratory recently identified the ZIP8 transporter protein, encoded by the mouse Slc39a8 gene, to be responsible for genetic differences in response to cadmium damage of the testis. Stable retroviral infection of the ZIP8 cDNA in mouse fetal fibroblast cultures (rvZIP8 cells) leads to as much as a 10-fold increa...

Certain heavy metals such as mercury, lead, arsenic and cadmium are toxic even in reduced concentrations in blood. Their accumulation in the body causes serious illnesses. The most important heavy metals in human pathology are: mercury (Hg), cadmium (Cd), arsenic (As) and lead (Pb). The author mentions the heavy metal sources of poisoning, their toxicokinetics and toxicodynamics, clinical featu...

a study was carried out in malawi to determine the levels of heavy metals in cabbages grown in gardens irrigated with reservoir and tap water. the concentrations of cadmium, lead and chromium were determined in the leaf and in the corresponding soils in order to assess whether the amounts in the soils reflected the accumulation of heavy metals in plants. the results showed that the levels of th...