Cumulative blood-cadmium and tubular proteinuria: a dose-response relationship.

Biological monitoring, i.e. using individual measures of exposure such as cadmium in blood, is supposed to reflect the real dose better than the more commonly used external measures such as air-cadmium. In order to investigate this, cumulative cadmium doses were estimated individually for 440 workers in a battery factory. Cumulative air-cadmium dose as well as two different cumulative blood-cadmium doses were computed for each study individual. Forty workers had evidence of tubular proteinuria and a clear dose-response relationship was found for each of the dose estimates. Our results suggest that cumulative blood-cadmium is a more sensitive indicator of cadmium-induced renal dysfunction than cumulative air-cadmium.