Determination of cadmium:

Cadmium is one of the most significant toxic elements from the environmental point of view. It occurs in nature mainly because of volcanic activity. It is used in plating of metals, as stabiliser in pigments, polyvinyl chloride, Ni-Cd batteries and alloying. It is the prime cause of 'itai-itai' disease first observed in Japan. Cadmium along with lead has been the most studied element along with regard to human toxicology as it has no role in human or plant nutrition. It is highly toxic even within trace amounts to the human body. Total intake of cadmium within USA, Germany, and most European countries is in the range, 10-30 µ g/day whereas in contaminated areas of Japan, its intake is as high as 400 µ g/day. It is most such as to be ingested through tobacco smoking especially cigarettes.

Absorption of cadmium is higher within females than in males though its transport within the intestinal tract is influenced through the presence of several food components such as proteins and amino acids.

Cadmium in blood might be used as a biological monitoring measure for recent occupational/environmental exposure. Further, cadmium within urine may also be used as a measure of biological monitoring for body burden whereas it reflects the total accumulation of cadmium in the body. Typically it occurs at ≤ 1µ g/L in the blood of healthy and nonexposed nonsmokers in various countries. Considering the requirements of detection limit and contamination free sample handling, graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrophotometry is the method of choice where the detection limit is 0.04 µ g/L.