Abstract
Airborne cadmium particles, which may be released into the environment by various industrial processes, are well within the range of respirable particle sizes. Forty to seventy percent of them are below a geometrie diameter of 2 µm,(1) and thus, when inhaled, penetrate deeply into the lung and can be deposited in the alveolar area. Here they act upon the lung cells and alter both ventilatory and nonventilatory lung functions. The degree of these effects depends on the local concentration and the biological half-life of the Cd containing particles in the lung.