Public health policies such as tobacco control, air pollution reduction, and hazardous waste remediation may have reduced cadmium exposure among U.S. adults. However, trends in urine cadmium, a marker of cumulative cadmium exposure, have not been evaluated. The authors estimated the trends in urine cadmium concentrations in U.S. adults using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) from 1988 to 2008.

Arsenic exposure in drinking water disproportionately affects small communities in some U.S. regions, including American Indian communities. In U.S. adults with no seafood intake, median total urine arsenic is 3.4