Cadmium in the spotlight - True or False?

Japanese miners began digging up cadmium from the Kamioka mines early in AD 710.

• True

• False

In the early XX century, cadmium was removed from zinc using acid, and then thrown away into streams or onto the grown.

• True

• False

Nowadays, cadmium has a lot of technological applications: coating to prevent corrosion, production of pigments and solders, etc.

• True

• False

The first signals of a mysterious disease were detected in 1912: some animal farms, specially those that were feed up with rice, often had renal failures.

• True

• False

In 1946, doctor Noboru Hagino suspected that the disease was caused by malnutrition. After his research, he concluded that the real cause was the presence of cadmium in local rice.

• True

• False

Cadmium and zinc are difficult to distinguish in the human body. Fortunately, cadmium is able to perform zinc functions rather well, and so its presence in the human body has only soft effects.

• True

• False

Doctor Hagino published his research results in 1961. They had an immediate repercussion and Japanese authorities, without hesitation, forced the mining company to pay restitutions to the survivors of the itai-itai disease.

• True

• False