In the Pipeline: Cadmium is bad news.
Lead and mercury get all the press, but cadmium is just as foul, even if far fewer people encounter it. Never in my career have I had any occasion to use any, and I like it that way. There was an organocadmium reaction in my textbook when I took sophomore organic chemistry, but it was already becoming obsolete, and good riddance, because this one of those metals that's best avoided for life. It has acute toxic effects, chronic toxic effects, and if there are any effects in between those it probably has them, too.
Fortunately, cadmium is not well absorbed from the gut, and even more fortunately, no one eats it. TED: Ideas worth spreading. Speech DSP. Salman Khan: Let's use video to reinvent education.