The toxic element that helps us fly: BBC’s Business Daily continues its “elements” series with a look this week on cadmium. Cadmium is a toxic element, but nickel-cadmium batteries are still being used for planes. The threat from Cadmium is that it “will actually sneak in into the locations that zinc occupies, so you’re really putting a spanner in the works. The results is that cadmium has now been implicated with a whole series of occupational diseases, but particularly cancer,” chemistry professor Andrea Sella says. However, metals consultant Dominic Boyle says “the best days of cadmium are past and in essence it is a dying metal.” (Run time 17:29)