“One doctor broke a girl’s wrist while taking her pulse”
What is cadmium? Well judging from its name, it does sound all sciency and you’re correct. Discovered by a German scientist, Friedrich Stromeyer, cadmium is element 48, one of the transitional metals that’s soft enough to be cut by a knife and it is very malleable. It is also a silver-white color that is mined from the Earth’s crust for our own resources like in batteries. However, miners would usually find cadmium with zinc so in order to purify it, they would burn the cadmium and add acid to remove it. Why acid? It is because when acid is mixed with cadmium, cadmium is then prone to become more soluble. This is one of the reasons why manufacturers don’t use cadmium in tankards and cups anymore because of how it resulted in illnesses when acidic juices like lemonade are mixed in cadmium cups for consumption. However, there are far more hazardous effects of consuming cadmium.
During the 19th century, Japan in its prime industrial age showed signs of prosperity in its economy. As mentioned before, miners would particularly keep the zinc and burn out the cadmium. The excess cadmium would be thrown and wasted away in the river (not the most safest way to discard cadmium, but sadly that’s how they did it). Unfortunately for the Japanese, rice was a staple diet for them, but the cadmium thrown in the water contaminated the crops. Soon, Japan was flooded with cases involving rice farmers with joint and deep bone pain, mainly in women. The Itai-Itai disease (or Ouch-Ouch) is often found to be more common for women because of their high tendency to absorb cadmium and metals in the gastrointestinal area, making them susceptible to this disease. Their bones will become more vulnerable because of how easily it would soften and snap.
Further developed research explained how cadmium affects our body. Apparently, cadmium can interfere with minerals in our body. Not only is cadmium mixed with zinc when it’s found, it also disrupts the zinc by replacing it. This sucks because zinc is essential in our bodies. Furthermore, cadmium also interferes with sulfur as well as calcium, causing the bones to soften and snap just like the itai-itai victims.
This toxic metal may also cause:
To sum it all up, don’t eat cadmium because it’ll disrupt your body.
