cadmium

Mercury, cadmium but the list is seemingly endless.

Memory effect was mostly folklore, and, regardless, was only specific to one very specific type of nickel-cadmium battery.

There are some similar question marks with cadmium based solar panels of which First Solar have installed 8GW worth.

The UK did the same between 1940 and 1979 in various tests with zinc cadmium sulphide, e.coli and bacillus globigii.

That might be explosive or otherwise prohibitive, so what about 45,000 lbs of nickel cadmium?

It's certainly true that the old nickel cadmium batteries were harmed by continuous charging.

Energy storage capacity depends on the number of atoms, not mass (as you can intuit by comparing lithium batteries to lead or nickel-cadmium batteries -- heavier doesn't mean more powerful).

Her family didn't know that on the roof, the Army was intentionally spewing hundreds of pounds of zinc cadmium sulfide into the air.

My understanding is that ecological impacts were more of a problem with older battery chemistries (lead-acid, nickel-cadmium), whereas lithium-ion packs are relatively benign.

> All contained higher levels of cadmium, which can severely damage the lungs and is linked with kidney disease.

Older battery tech used toxic metals like cadmium or lead, and were somewhat less easy to recycle, but this is not the case with modern lithium cells.

- full paper, source article: Higher antioxidant concentrations and less cadmium and pesticide residues in organically-grown crops: a systematic literature review and meta-analyses.

They don't need a lot of Tellurium, and that's only for the "thin film" cadmium-telluride ones.

If the mystery element is Cadmium, then the mass would be xxx, but it's yyy, so we can rule that out..." Of course I've forgotten the specifics, but the method is just like it is in programming.

Cadmium would be consistent with the valence electrons required for the bond to work.

Lithium-polymer batteries are much better than the old Nickel-Cadmium batteries we had when I was a kid.

Cadmium (which they state as the one metal that comes with lower concentrations for organic food), for example, can be part of certain fertilizers.