Effects of Cadmium what are the effects of Cadmium on humans, animals, and the earth?

Essay by gakidouHigh School, 11th gradeA, March 2004

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Cadmium is a kind of metal, which is naturally found as a compound with other elements. There are many uses of cadmium, such as batteries, cigarette smoke, pigments, metal coatings, plastics, and appears a lot in industrial waste. The consequences of using cadmium are quite dangerous when it comes to the health of humans and the environment. It contaminates the earth's waters, air, and soil; so it basically can be found almost everywhere on earth. Since the environment is contaminated by this element, people tend to breathe, eat, or drink small or large amounts of it, which is severely fatal to humans.

The effect that cadmium has on the earth is kind of like a chain reaction. When cadmium is mined to store in a battery factory, they use the cadmium for the batteries. Now because it is a factory, they will eventually have waste to dump. The cheapest way to dump it is into water or it into the ground.

So then the contaminated water travels through the river and eventually is taken into soil, where grass takes it from the soil. So a farm has this contaminated grass, and on top of that dumps fertilizer containing some cadmium into his/her crops and into the soil again. So following that a cow eats the grass, and is unfortunately butchered, and then fed to people at MacDonald's. Just from that one action, cadmium suddenly spread from a factory, to a farm, and finally to MacDonald's. Then after someone has good meal of MacDonald's, he/she lights up a cigarette and therefore exposes even more cadmium into the earth.

Cadmium is very unhealthy for humans to inhale and digest small or even large amounts of it. Breathing in the air of second hand smoke (containing cadmium of course) can...