Dietary uptake is an almost exclusive route of Cd exposure in the general Japanese population. Boiled rice is a strong determinant of variation in dietary Cd intake. Whereas there was a substantial reduction in Cd exposure among Japanese populations in the last 15 years, the current level is still high when compared internationally.

Both Cd-B and Cd-U can be employed as biomarkers of environmental Cd exposure. The reliability of Pb-U for use in place of Pb-B appeared to be small.

Objectives: To establish a general view of food habits in Thailand, and to make a quantitative assessment of rice dependency of Thai people. Design: Cross-sectional study. Setting: Community. Subjects: 52 non-smoking and non-habitually drinking adult women in Bangkok participated in the study. Methods: The participants offered 24 h food duplicates and peripheral blood samples, and underwent clinical examination including anthropometry. The duplicates were subjected to nutritional evaluation taking advantage of the Thai food composition tables (FCTs), and analyzed for eight nutrient elements by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Results: The participants took 1630 kcal from 55 g protein (63% from animal sources), 57 g lipid (mostly from vegetable oil), and 224 g carbohydrate (60% from rice) daily. Nutrient intake at lunch was as large as that at dinner. About a half of the women had insuf®cient energy intake (ie`80% RDA) whereas 4% had an excess ( b 120%). Protein intake was suf®cient in most cases, whereas lipid intake was in excess in more than a half of the women. Ca, Fe, Mg, Zn and possibly P intakes were below the RDA values in many participants. FCT-based estimates agreed well with the ICP-MS measures in cases of Fe and Ca but tended to be greater than the measures by 50% with regard to P. Conclusions: Lunch as substantial as dinner for Thai urbanites. There was a marked dependency on rice as an energy source. Whereas protein intake is generally suf®cient, the intake of Ca (and to a lesser extent Fe) was insuf®cient in a majority of the study participants. Sponsorship: Dai-ichi Mutual Life Insurance, Japan; the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the government of Japan.