Word: cadmium
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...Takako became a lathe operator at a cadmium smelter near her home in Annaka, a city on the main island of Honshu. When she began suffering mysterious pains in 1961, no one even thought to blame cadmium. As protection against the toxic metal, which is widely used for electroplating, she wore special rubber clothing. Doctors diagnosed her ailment as "intestinal ulcers." But even eight years after she switched to clerical work, the pain continued. Two summers ago, it got so bad that Takako, 28, leaped from a speeding train and into a river...
...complaining of a strange disease called, for lack of a medical term, itai-itai (ouch-ouch). Seeking clues, health officials finally exhumed Takako's body last month and performed an autopsy. The results shocked the nation. By current Japanese standards, a reading of one part per million of cadmium is harmful to humans. Takako's liver contained 4,540 p.p.m., her kidneys 22,400 p.p.m. Scientists speculated that she breathed cadmium particles and fumes generated by the plant's smelting process, and pointed out that a major symptom of such poisoning, decalcification of bones, is not detectable...
Spirit and Suicide. Prime Minister Sato has ordered health checks on all workers in the more than 1,000 Japanese plants that use cadmium-a crucial step, since only a handful of those plants take adequate safety precautions. Last week health officials reported that cadmium has tainted much of the country's rice. Farmers around Takako's city of Annaka, for example, have been urged to stop raising wheat and Chinese cabbages; samples have been found to contain as much as 17.8 p.p.m. of cadmium...
...quality control. In its present form, it sets national standards for ten air contaminants like carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide. Polluting industries would have to meet these standards in about five years. The bill also requires the Department of Health, Education and Welfare to prohibit hazardous emissions (asbestos, cadmium, mercury and beryllium) not covered by the air-quality standards. It orders new industrial plants to install antipollution devices, denies Government contracts to companies that violate air standards, and allows private citizens to sue polluting industries and individuals. To pay for research and administration, the bill allocates $1.19 billion spread over...
Unfortunately, mercury is only one of a galaxy of new-found environmental hazards. A Senate subcommittee was recently warned by Dr. Henry Schroeder of the Dartmouth Medical School that such substances as lead, cadmium and nickel carbonyl are "much more insidious" in their effect than pesticides or other polluters of air and water. It is possible, the Senators were told, that minute amounts of cadmium in humans can cause high blood pressure, while trace amounts of nickel carbonyl can cause lung cancer...