Accumulation of cadmium in livers and kidneys in Greenlanders

In the Arctic, the traditional diet exposes its people to a very high intake of cadmium because it is highly concentrated in the liver and kidneys of commonly eaten marine mammals. In one study in Greenland, the cadmium intake was estimated to 182 μg/day/person in the fall and 346 in the spring. To...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Science of the total environment 2006-12, Vol.372 (1), p.58-63
Main Authors: Johansen, Poul, Mulvad, Gert, Pedersen, Henning Sloth, Hansen, Jens C., Riget, Frank
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Autopsy
Biological Availability
Cadmium
Cadmium - metabolism
Diet
Environmental Monitoring
Environmental Pollutants - metabolism
Female
Food Contamination
Greenland
Humans
Kidney
Kidney Cortex - metabolism
Liver
Liver - metabolism
Male
Man
Middle Aged
Smoking
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Summary:In the Arctic, the traditional diet exposes its people to a very high intake of cadmium because it is highly concentrated in the liver and kidneys of commonly eaten marine mammals. In one study in Greenland, the cadmium intake was estimated to 182 μg/day/person in the fall and 346 in the spring. To determine whether the cadmium is accumulated in humans, we analyzed autopsy samples of liver and kidneys from 95 ethnic Greenlanders (aged 19–89) who died from a wide range of causes. The cadmium concentration in liver (overall mean 1.97 μg/g wet wt) appeared to be unrelated to any particular age group, whereas the concentrations in the kidneys peaked in Greenlanders between 40 and 50 years of age (peak concentration 22.3 μg/g wet wt). Despite the high cadmium levels in the typical Greenlander diet, we found that the cadmium concentrations in livers and kidneys were comparable to those reported from Denmark, Sweden, Australia and Great Britain. Furthermore, even though the mean cadmium intake from the diet was estimated to be 13–25 times higher in Greenlanders than in Danes, we found similar cadmium levels in the kidneys of both. Seal livers and kidneys are the main source of cadmium in the diet of Greenlanders, but these tissues are not eaten in Denmark. Thus, our results suggest that the accumulation of cadmium from Greenlander's marine diet is very low.
ISSN:0048-9697
1879-1026
DOI:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2006.08.005