BACKGROUND: In industrialized countries, the prevalence of intestinal diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease(IBD) increases, and cadmium pollution is one of the common pollutants in industrial production, so we hypothesized that there is an association between cadmium pollution and IBD. OBJECTIVE: To explore whether there is an association between cadmium exposure and symptoms of IBD and chronic diarrhea among US adults using the 2007—2010 NHANES. METHODS: Weighted multivariate logistic regression was used to analyze the relationship between urinary cadmium and IBD and chronic diarrhea symptoms population, and the restricted cubic spline further explained the dose-response relationship between urinary cadmium and IBD and chronic diarrhea symptoms. RESULTS: After adjustment for confounders, participants with higher urinary cadmium levels were more likely to have IBD, chronic diarrhea symptoms (OR 1.77, 95% CI (1.23—2.54), P = 0.001). The Limited cubic spline analysis showed an L-shaped non-linear relationship between urinary cadmium and the risk of IBD, chronic diarrhea symptoms population with a cut off value of 0.042.