CADMIUM RENAL EFFECT LEVELS ESTIMATED FROM ANALYSIS OF LIVER AND KIDNEY CONCENTRATIONS.

It is in the context of understanding the behaviour of different biological monitoring parameters in relation to cadmium body burden, that the recently developed methods for measuring in-vivo the amount of cadmium stored in liver and kidney have proved to be of particular value. The more commonly used method is neutron activation, in which cadmium is measured by counting the characteristic gamma -rays emitted when cadmium-113, one of the naturally occuring isotopes, captures neutrons. The alternative approach is X-ray fluorescence, in which the characteristic X-rays of cadmium are excited either by gamma -rays or, in a more recent development, by polarised X-rays. These two techniques give somewhat different information because the sensitivity of X-ray fluorescence varies sharply with the depth of tissue overlying the organ being studied, normally the kidney.