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To investigate the chronic low-level environmental cadmium and zinc exposure of Chinese women and find the relationships between these parameters and hypertension, 58 women without histories of smoking and occupational exposure were conducted into this cross-section study and divided into three groups: Group I. 24 normal healthy, Group II: 24 untreated essential hypertension, and Group III: 10 untreated nonessential hypertension women. The serum cadmium and daily urinary cadmium excretion of Group II (1.69 [+ or -] 0.92 [mu]g/L; 2.43 [+ or -] 1.93 [mu]/d) were significantly higher than those of Group I (0.88 [+ or -] 0.92 [mu]g/L; 1.07 [+ or -] 1.45 [mu]g/d) as well as Group III (0.92 [+ or -] 0.91 [mu]g/L; 0.19 [+ or -] 0.23 [mu]g/d). The ratio of urinary zinc ([mu]g) urinary creatinine (g) of Group II (865.99 [+ or -] 460.54 [mu]g/g) was higher than that of Group I (622.39 [+ or -] 250.96 [mu]g/g). The ratio of urinary cadmium concentrations ([mu]g)/urinary creatinine (g) of all healthy Chinese women was 1.30 [+ or -] 1.67 which is higher than that of other nations in the world except Japanese. After adjusting age and body mass index, we found mean arterial pressure positively correlated with serum cadmium in all subjects (p = 0.0058). The mean arterial pressure also positively correlated with serum cadmium (p = 0.0017) as well as daily urinary cadmium excretion (p = 0.0088) in all women except the nonessential group. Both the ratios of urinary zinc ([mu]g)/urinary creatinine (g) (p = 0.0165) and urinary cadmium ([mu]g)/urinary creatinine (g) positively (p = 0. 0246) related to mean arterial pressure in women of Group I and II. The results of our study indicate that environmental chronic low-level cadmium exposure may play a role in the essential hypertension in Chinese women. In addition, zinc, like cadmium, may be associated with essential hypertension of human., (Key Words: hypertension; cadmium: zinc; body cadmium burden.) INTRODUCTION Cadmium is a trace metal that can progressively accumulate in the human tissue with age and does not play a known [...]