Word: cadmium
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...based Continental Telephone Supply Co., Inc., a leader in the bug-and anti-bugging business, proudly advertises a postage-stamp-size, transistorized "007 Spy Transmitter" that can pick up whispered conversations and broadcast them to a conventional radio receiver located nearby. The 007 is powered by a tiny nickel-cadmium or mercury battery that will last for 60 hours. Another Continental bug looks like an exact copy of a telephone microphone. But substituted for that mike in a standard telephone, it operates indefinitely on the phone's own current and transmits both sides of any telephone conversation...
Kidney Analyses. Among the 20 elements that Dr. Schroeder investigated as potential artificial pollutants, cadmium produced the most striking results. Rats given minute traces of cadmium salts in drinking water all their lives developed high blood pressure of a type remarkably similar to the human disease. More females than males developed the disease, but it was deadlier to the males; the animals developed fatty plaques in their aortas, and showed enlargement of the heart. When rats receiving cadmium were divided into two groups, 80% of those on soft water developed high blood pressure as against only 17% of those...
...next question was obvious: Do humans react like rats when they ingest cadmium and other metals? By way of answer, Dr. Schroeder offered chemical analyses of 400 human kidneys showing that Americans at birth have a negligible amount of cadmium stored there, that the amount of the metal increases gradually with age and reaches its highest levels in patients with high blood pressure of unknown origin. He did not have to remind his medical audience that kidney function is important in regulating blood pressure, and that many cases of high blood pressure are clearly associated with kidney disorders...
Civilized man, said Dr. Schroeder, ingests an excess of cadmium from tea and coffee, refined flour and polished rice, some phosphate-fertilized crops- and water pipes. Soft water, he declared, takes up cadmium, a contaminant in copper and galvanized pipes, far more readily than does hard water...
Cautiously, Dr. Schroeder pointed out that he was not simplistically laying all the blame for high blood pressure and atherosclerosis on cadmium and chromium. Other exotic elements such as vanadium, zirconium and niobium, all "abundant in the human body," influence the level of fats in the blood...