Cadmium pollutiona threat to kidneys

Press, 5 December 1978, Page 18

Cadmium pollution—a threat to kidneys

About 5 per cent of the population in several industrial countries appear to have suffered kidney damage from cadmium pollution, according to a world authority on the subject. Professor Lars Friberg chairman of the department of environmental hygiene at the Karolinska Institute. Stockholm, was one of the experts who alerted the w'orld to the seriousness of mercury pollution. He gave his warning on cadmium at the nineteenth International Congress on Occupational Health in Dubrovnik, and said that it was partly prompted by new research indicating that persons suffering from iron deficiencies, particularly women, absorbed the metal much

more quickly than the rest of the population. The cadmium level in the kidneys of persons in industrialised countries was alarming, he said. Even Sweden, where the ’ population had relatively low levels, had reached the point when any increase would cause a percentage to suffer damage. Several industrialised countries had about 5 per cent of their population suffering from damage, and Japan seemed to have more. Victims might show no symptoms at first, but diseases like pneumonia could mobilise the stored cadmium and rot the kidneys, Professor Friberg said. The amount of cadmium in the environment continued to increase: it was used in products ranging

from batteries to plating and pigments, and from wires to television sets and fertilisers.

Professor Friberg believes that the safety levels for industrial exposure are generally far too high. He is particularly critical of the British standard — 50 micrograms per cubic metre of air — and believes that it should be reduced to 20 micrograms, as in Sweden, or 10 micrograms, as in Finland. However, even a 10 microgram standard is unsatisfactory, he says.

He has condemned the failure of industrial-safety organisations to consider that persons with iron deficiencies absorb cadmium at four times the normal rate. Iron deficiency is particularly common in women — O.F.N.S. Copyright.