International Conference on Environmental Cadmium: An Overview

The International Conference on Environmental Cadmium was held June 7-9, 1978 on the NIH Campus in Bethesda, Maryland, to summarize the current level of scientific knowledge about cadmium as an environmental agent and to identify needed areas of research. The meeting was sponsored by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the Department of Environmental Hygiene, Karolinska Institute, as Cooperating World Health Organization Centers in collaboration with the Scientific Committee on the Toxicology of Metals under the Permanent Commission and International Association on Occupational Health. The following overview was assembled with the assistance of Dr. Gunnar Nordberg, Secretary of the Scientific Committee on the Toxicology of Metals, and persons attending the conference, but final responsibility for the summary content and attached recommendations should be regarded as that of only the conference chairman. The meeting was divided into consecutive sessions dealing with methods and problems of analysis, sources of environmental pollution, occurrence and transformation in nature, effects and dose-response relationships in humans, kinetics and metabolism, effects and dose-response relationships in animals. Each of these sessions is summarized below followed by recommendations for areas of future research.