Word: cadmium
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...technology that most fascinates visitors is a method for peering below the surface of a finished artwork and analyzing the various layers of paint it contains. The technique, computerized infrared reflectoscopy, is based on the fact that some pigments that reflect light in the visible range (like cadmium red) are more or less transparent to infrared light. By looking through these layers, art historians can catch glimpses of the artist's original handiwork: rough sketches, repaintings and the occasional erasure. Other techniques, notably X-ray analysis, had been used in the past. The major advantage of using a computer with...
...Pacific coastal waters are generally cleaner than most, but they also contain pockets of dead -- and deadly -- water. Seattle's Elliott Bay is contaminated with a mix of copper, lead, arsenic, zinc, cadmium and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chemicals once widely used by the ( electrical-equipment industry. "The bottom of this bay is a chart of industrial history," says Thomas Hubbard, a water-quality planner for Seattle. "If you took a core sample, you could date the Depression, World War II. You could see when PCBs were first used and when they were banned and when lead was eliminated from gasoline...
...Francisco Bay is also contaminated with copper, nickel, cadmium, mercury and other heavy metals from industrial discharges. Last year toxic discharges increased 23%. In Los Angeles urban runoff and sewage deposits have had a devastating impact on coastal ecosystems, notably in Santa Monica Bay, which gets occasional floods of partly processed wastes from a nearby sewage- treatment plant during heavy rainstorms. Off San Diego's Point Loma, a popular haunt of skin divers, the waters are so contaminated with sewage that undersea explorers run the risk of bacterial infection...
Fish and shellfish that have absorbed toxins can indirectly pass contaminants to humans. Birds migrating between Central America and the Arctic Circle, for example, make a stopover in San Francisco's wetlands, where they feast on clams and mussels that contain high concentrations of cadmium, mercury and lead. Says Biologist Gregory Karras of Citizens for a Better Environment: "The birds become so polluted, there is a risk from eating ducks shot in the South...
...Waters' era, and neither the 49ers nor the local parks department can confirm it was ever used). Milorganite, made by the Milwaukee metropolitan sewerage district, is a heat- dried residue of sewage sludge and is used on lawns nationwide. Prior to 1978, it had a high content of cadmium, a heavy metal...