REVIEW PAPER Cadmium levels in Europe: implications for human health Jilang Pan Æ Jane A. Plant Æ Nikolaos Voulvoulis Æ Christopher J. Oates Æ Christian Ihlenfeld Received: 27 November 2008 / Accepted: 23 July 2009 / Published online: 18 August 2009 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009 Abstract In this study we used the Forum of European Geological Surveys geochemical baseline data to examine the distribution of cadmium (Cd) in Europe, with a particular reference to the interna- tional soil and water guideline values. The highest cadmium levels were found to occur in topsoil and to follow closely the distribution of P 2 O 5 , suggesting that the contamination was from the use of rock phosphate fertilizer in intensive arable agriculture. In terms of human health impacts, food (up to several hundred lg/day) was found as the only major route of exposure to Cd for the non-smoking general popula- tion. It appeared that low levels of chronic exposure to Cd resulted in completely different human health impacts than those high levels that had caused the ‘itai–itai’ disease. Some correlations were suggested between cadmium levels and the age-adjusted pros- tate or breast cancer rates distributed in the European countries under study. Keywords Cadmium Á Human health impact Á FOREGS Á Prostate cancer Á Breast cancer Introduction Cadmium (Cd) in the environment has been a concern since the 1960s, when a painful bone disease ‘itai–itai’ was reported to have been caused by cadmium pollution in an area in Japan. The Cd contamination was from a historical zinc–lead (Zn– Pb) mine transported by the river and deposited on paddy fields downstream. People who consumed the polluted rice and drunk the river water over a period of 30 years were found to have accumulated in their bodies a large amount of cadmium that eventually was enough to lead to a serious osteoporosis-like bone disease known to the Japanese as ‘itai–itai byo’ or ‘ouch–ouch disease’. Cadmium has also recently been shown to be an endocrine-disrupting chemical with estrogenic prop- erties (Miller 1996) and a potential prostate carcin- ogen (Benbrahim-Tallaa et al. 2007). In addition to being persistent and toxic, Cd is bioaccumulative with high concentrations occurring particularly in the kidney. In the natural environment, the cadmium content in igneous rocks is generally low and has no clear relationship with the concentration of other chemical elements other than Zn (Nriagu 1980). Cadmium tends to be most enriched in shales, oceanic and lacustrine sediments, and phosphorites. More than 90% of Cd in the surface environment is from anthropogenic sources including rock phosphate fertilizer, the ash from fossil-fuel combustion, waste J. Pan Á J. A. Plant Á N. Voulvoulis (&) Imperial College London, London, UK e-mail: n.voulvoulis@imperial.ac.uk C. J. Oates Á C. Ihlenfeld Anglo American Plc, London, UK 123 Environ Geochem Health (2010) 32:1–12 DOI 10.1007/s10653-009-9273-2