Health. "A health bomb": what is cadmium, a carcinogenic metal found in food?

Less well-known than other toxic products, it is nevertheless omnipresent in our environment and on supermarket shelves, and poses health risks in France, particularly for children, to the point of causing "great concern" among private doctors. Its name: cadmium.

What is this ?

Cadmium is a heavy metal belonging to the transition metal family. Naturally present in the Earth's crust in very small quantities, its concentration in our soils has gradually increased, partly due to its use in numerous industrial processes, and partly because it is an ingredient in the phosphate fertilizers used in agriculture to improve crop yields.

Why does this worry health authorities?

On Monday, the National Conference of Regional Unions of Healthcare Professionals - Independent Physicians (URPS-ML) sent a letter to the Prime Minister and the Ministers of Health, Agriculture, and Ecological Transition to warn of what it describes as a "health bomb."

Indeed, due to its physicochemical properties, very similar to those of calcium, cadmium can cross biological barriers and bind to bones. As a result, prolonged exposure could cause bone diseases such as osteoporosis (excessive weakening of the skeleton).

Also associated with nephropathy (kidney disease), cadmium is of particular concern to the medical profession for its role in the onset of cancers , and in particular "the major and extremely worrying increase in the incidence of pancreatic cancer", as indicated by Public Health France in its Esteban study in 2021.

Between 2010 and 2023, its incidence rate in France increased by 1.6% per year in men and 2.1% in women. It could become the second most deadly cancer in the next decade, according to the French National Society of Gastroenterology.

How does it poison us?

Doctors have decided to sound the alarm about this metal, which is classified as carcinogenic, because we are exposed to it every day. First, through food. "Indeed, in the soil, it easily penetrates plants through their roots and thus enters the food chain," emphasizes the French Agency for Food, Environmental, and Occupational Health and Safety (ANSES). Among the foods with the highest cadmium content are offal, shellfish, sweet and savory biscuits, pasta, bread, cereals, potatoes, certain vegetables like spinach, and even chocolate.

And some of its products are very common in children's food. This is why the URPS-ML is alarmed by an "explosion of contamination among young children." According to the study by Santé publique France, 18% of children (6 to 17 years old) exceeded the "critical concentration" threshold set by ANSES at 0.5 µg/g. In its study on infant nutrition (2016), the latter even stated that nearly 36% of children under three exceeded "the tolerable daily intake by ingestion for cadmium."

What does the Ministry of Health say about it?

Asked about the matter on Thursday, the Ministry of Health did not immediately respond. However, according to the government website Notre Environnement , cadmium emissions into the air decreased by 81% between 2000 and 2016, notably due to "tightening regulatory requirements for the treatment of atmospheric emissions from household waste incineration plants, improvements in chemical treatment processes and the installation of dust collectors."

In 2016, the cadmium level was "in compliance with quality standards at all air measurement points" in metropolitan France, the site continues. "Only two surface water bodies (Bages lagoon in Aude and Deule canal in Pas-de-Calais) have excessive cadmium concentrations and one groundwater body has high concentrations (Moselle)." Finally, "in the North, the valleys of the Somme and the lower Seine, Lorraine and Alsace, the course of the Rhône and its delta, certain sites and soils polluted by current or former activity are also sources of cadmium dispersion."