Henry A. Schroeder

Cadmium as a factor in hypertension

Abstract Most human subjects dying from hypertensive complications showed in their kidneys either increased concentrations of cadmium or increased ratios of cadmium to zinc, compared to subjects dying of a variety of other major diseases. Within the limits of 358 kidneys analyzed, this alteration occurred in both the United States and in foreign countries around the world.

Toxic Effects of Trace Elements on the Reproduction of Mice and Rats

Breeding mice and rats were exposed to low doses of six trace elements in drinking water in an environment controlled as to contaminating trace metals. Each group was carried through three generations. Compared to control mice given only doubly deionized wafer, selenafe (3 ppm selenium) resulted in excess deaths before weaning, runts, and failures to breed. Lead (25 ppm) and cadmium (10 ppm) resulted in loss of the strain in two generations with many abnormalities. Molybdate (10 ppm molybdenum) was slightly toxic in this respect, and arsenic resulted only in elevated ratios of males to females. In rats, lead was very toxic, and titanium and nickel moderately toxic, resulting in many early deaths and runts. This method provides fairly rapid estimates of innate toxicities of trace elements in doses tolerable for growth and survival.

Essential trace metals in man: selenium

In order to obtain data on environmental sources and human exposures to selenium, a trace element essential for mammals, a number of common foods, wild and domestic animal tissues and tissues of human beings were analyzed by a photofluorometric technique. Selenium was found in few vegetables, but seafood, meats and most grains contained appreciable amounts. The daily intake in a standard diet was 62..mu..g. Cooked and processed foods contained considerably less selenium than raw foods. The calculated human body burden of selenium was 14.6 mg (range 13-20 mg). Wild animals contained two to three times as high a concentration of selenium as the human beings analyzed. Kidneys showed the highest concentrations. Selenium did not accumulate in human hair with age, but increased in hair of rats fed selenate. Under some conditions, selenium is carcinogenic in rats. No recorded case of human or animal cancer is known which could be attributed to environmental selenium, or the lack of it.

Essential trace metals in man: manganese. A study in homeostasis.

MANGANESE, a transitional metal with atomic number 25, has been considered essential for the normal physiological function of mammals and birds for 30 years. In spite of incontrovertible but indirect evidence of a requirement for dietary manganese, however, deficiency in man has not been recognized. There is considerable interest in the physiological and biochemical role of manganese by nutritionists, enzymologists and pathologists. The subject has been excellently reviewed on two occasions by COTZIAS

Trace metals in man: Strontium and barium☆

[l, 21. There are gaps, however, in some of the basic data and, at the risk ofbeing repetitious, we have surveyed the field from biogeochemical and analytical viewpoints, as we have other trace elements, in order to answer certain questions pertinent to manganese metabolism in man. These are: (1) What are the environmental sources of manganese? (2) How good is the human homeostatic mechanism for the metal? (3) Does manganese deficiency exist in man, even if slight? (4) Do diseases caused by accumulation of manganese occur in man? (5) What is the actual daily intake of manganese by normal human beings? (6) What living organisms have homeostatic mechanisms for manganese? This report is the tenth of a series on trace elements in human beings [3-111 and represents the first on an essential one. Although there are much older data in the literature, we have attempted to present newer material not available elsewhere as well as to repeat many analyses done by others in order to arrive at our own viewpoint.

Abnormal trace metals in man: arsenic.

IN 1808, Sir Humphrey Davy added two

Essential trace metals in man: copper.

elements to an expanding list. One he named strontium, after Strontian, a town in Scotland, and the other barium, after the Greek word barys (heavy) [l]. Both occur in relatively high concentrations on the earth’s crust, at 400 and 450 ppm, respectively, and both are constituents of sea water, at 8.1 ppm for strontium and 0.03 ppm for barium [2]. Therefore, living things have grown and evolved in the presence of these two alkaline earths, and have incorporated them in their tissues. Aside from natural occurrences, man has exposed himself to increasing concentrations of barium. Barite (barium sulfate) is used as a lubricating agent in drilling oil wells, 564,000 tons being consumed in the United States in 1968. Barium compounds are employed in making glass, ceramics, television picture tubes, as a pigment in paint (lithopone), in brick and tile refractories, for paper coating, steel hardening, vinyl stabilizers, lubricating oil additives, permanent magnets, railroad flares, fireworks and sugar refining. About 208,000 tons of barium compounds were sold in the United States in 1968. Some 2,172,OOO tons of barium were consumed in the world in that year [3,4]. Uses of strontium are fewer, there being only 12,500 tons produced in the free world in 1968 [3]. Major uses were as getters to remove traces of gas from vacuum tubes and as colors for tracer bullets, signal rockets, flares and fireworks. Strontium compounds also have a place in ceramics, medicines, greases, plastics, purifying zinc, permanent magnets and iron castings [3]. Although the actual amounts of exposures of the population were small, the greatest health hazard to the population at large came from atmospheric testing of atomic bombs, O”Sr being a fission product.

Studies on the control of hypertension by hyphex. II. Toxic reactions and side effects.

A survey of arsenic in the biosphere, involving analyses of substances by which man is exposed, has been made, using ashing at low temperatures and chemical methods. Arsenic was found in soils, most foods, many waters, almost all plants and plant products and in most animal tissues. Arsenic is ubiquitous in the biosphere, with a few exceptions. Data is included which show the amount of arsenic found in numerous foods, plants and plant products, as well as in mammalian tissues and fluids. Arsenic is examined as a biologic trace element according to the following criteria: ubiquity, presence in living things, atomic structure and biochemical actions, homeostasis, toxicity, arsenic in disease, mammalian metabolism, arsenic balance in man and arsenate as an essential trace element.

Relations between hardness of water and death rates from certain chronic and degenerative diseases in the United States.

COPPER, atomic number 29, has played a dominant role in civilization since the Stone Age. Attractive to the eye, malleable and ductile, found native and in many minerals, copper was probably the first metal worked by ancient man some 7000 to 8000 years ago. The earliest known artifacts of hammered copper were found in Anatolia, Syria, Iraq and Iran; they date from the 6th and 5th millennia, B.C. Annealing and toolmaking were developed during the next 500 years, altering the course of human history. After 4000 B.C., melting and casting of copper became common practices in the Near East& Smelting was developed about 3000 B.C., followed in 500 years by the invention of bronze, exploited probably near Byblos (Lebanon), which stimulated an extensive civilization lasting a thousand years. The new art of metallurgy apparently spread over most of the world, although bronze was little used in the Western Hemisphere and not at all in Africa for many centuries [ll. Brass was not developed until Roman times [2]. In the modern age, Western civilization has become even more dependent upon copper. Copper’s electrical conductivity is second only to that of silver. Its abundance has provided the means for the enormous advances based on electricity during the past 80 years. Food has been cooked in copper vessels since the metal was first worked, for copper is the best of all metals as a conductor of heat. One of the Laws of Moses concerned the cleanliness of copper vessels5 which are still used over much of the known world for cooking food. In India, pots and pans of copper are periodically tinned to prevent contact of food with the metal.

TRACE ELEMENTS IN HUMAN TISSUE. PART III. SUBJECTS FROM AFRICA, THE NEAR AND FAR EAST AND EUROPE

Although effective in maintaining relatively normal levels of blood pressure in hypertensive patients and retarding some of the serious and fatal secondary consequences of the disease, hexamethonium ion and 1-hydrazinophthalazine can cause severe immediate and late reactions. The latter drug has produced collagen diseases of varying degrees of severity, all of which have regressed on cessation of medication, in 14 of 253 patients. The combination has given rise to fatal interstitial pneumonia in 5 of 89 in malignant stages of hypertension. Less serious side effects of each agent are also discussed.