Cancer-Causing Arsenic Is Building Up in the World’s Rice

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Throughout the Yangtisi River Delta, an area in southern China, famous for the production of wide rice, farmers grow thin green straps. Before they reach several feet and turn golden brown, the grassy plants are soaked in the muddy fields full of water for several months. Along the flooded plants, Leveees store and distribute fixed water supplies from farmers from nearby channels.

This traditional practice of the flooding field to raise almost ancient thirsty crops such as domestication of old grains. After thousands of years, the agricultural method of traveling in rice cultivation practices continues from low fields in Arkansas to Vietnam’s sprawling balconies.

With the planet’s temperature rising, this popular process for the development of rice has become more dangerous to millions of people around the world who eaten grains regularly, according to the research published on Wednesday in Lancet Planetary Health. The researchers say that rice is the second largest food source in the world for inorganic arsenic, and climate change appears to increase the amount of toxic chemicals in which it is located. If nothing is done to transform how most rice is produced in the world, organizing the amount of what people consume, or reduce warming, the authors conclude that societies with heavy diets can begin to face increased risk of cancer and disease after 2050.

“Our results are very frightening,” said Dong Wang, an environmental doctorate at the Institute of Soil Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which led the newspaper. “It is a disaster … and an invitation to wake up.”

In 2014, Wang and an international team of climate scientists, factory and public health began working together on a research project that would end up to nearly a decade. By going through the rice field through the Yangti Delta, they sought to know how the temperatures and carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere in 2050 will interact with arsenic in the soil and rice crops cultivated there. They knew, from previous research, that cancer was a problem with rice crops, but they wanted to know the amount of the issue that might be in the world of warming. The team not only looked at any rice, but some types of grains that produce and consume them all over the world.

Although there are estimated 40,000 types of rice on this planet, they tend to assemble them in three categories based on the length of the grains. Short grain rice, or sticky type is often used in sushi; Long grains, which include aromatic types such as basmati and jasmine; Medium grains, or rice that tends to serve a main dish. Among them, the short to medium japonica and long grains are the two main sub -types of cultivated rice that is eaten throughout Asia. The Wang growth designed 28 types of Japanese rice, Indika, and the central fox of food for seven of the best countries consumed for rice production on the continent: Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Vietnam. India, Vietnam and China are among a group of eight countries that lead the rest of the world in rice exports.

After nearly a decade of monitoring and analyzing plant growth, researchers discovered that the combination of higher temperatures and CO2 encourages the growth of the root, which increases the ability of rice plants to absorb arsenic from the soil. They believe that this is due to climate -related changes in soil chemistry that prefers arsenic can be absorbed more easily in the grains. The fertilized carbon carbon crops are found to capture more carbon into the atmosphere and pump some of them into the soil, stimulating the microbes that make arsenic.

The higher the root growth, the greater the number of carbon in the soil, which can be a source of food for soil bacteria that multiply under the temperature of warming. When the soil is diluted in rice of rice, the oxygen is exhausted, causing soil bacteria on arsenic to generate energy. The end result is more arsenic in rice, and more roots to take them to developing grains.

These accumulated effects of the arsenic associated with increasing the growth of the root and carbon capture are a contradictory surprise for Korean Lesc, and it is a post -doctoral climate at Dartmouth College and a crop researcher that is not resulting from the paper. Lake said that the paradox is that both of this result was talked about as possible benefits of rice materials under climate change. “It can make more rice roots more resistant to dehydration, and can enhance the cheaper carbon in general,” he said. “But the additional accumulation of arsenic may make it difficult to achieve the health benefits of this return.”

Arsenic comes in different shapes. Inorganic toxic arsenic – compounds that do not contain carbon – is what the World Health Organization classifies as “confirmed carcinogens” and “the most important chemical pollution in drinking water worldwide.” Arsenic forms are usually more toxic to humans because they are less stable than their organic counterparts and may allow arsenic to interact with molecules that intensify exposure. Chronic exposure to lung, bladder and skin cancer, as well as heart disease, diabetes, negative pregnancy, neurological issues, and weakening of the immune system, are linked among other health effects.

Scientists and public health specialists have known for years that the presence of arsenic in food is an increasing threat, but food exposure has long been less than risk compared to polluted groundwater. So policy measures to relieve risks were slow. The few few standards that were enacted by the European Union and China, for example, are largely inconsistent and inconsistent. There is no country that has developed formal regulations for organic arsenic exposure in foods. (In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has created the level of 100 parts per billion of the inorganic arsenic in infant rice pills, but this recommendation for manufacturers is not an enforceable regulation of arsenic in rice or any other food.)

Wang hopes to see this change. For example, the non -organic arsenic levels that are usually present in rice today are part of the recommended standards in China, for example, but its paper shows that lifetime bladder and lung cancer are likely to increase “temperatures” consistently (3.6 ° C). A million, it is expected that the levels of inorganic arsenic in the studied rice varieties will increase by 44 percent. This means that more than half of the rice samples will exceed the current proposed limit of China, which limits 200 parts per billion for the inorganic arsenic in rice rice, with an estimated 13.4 million cancer associated with the exposure to the rice -based arsenic.

Since these health risks are partially calculated based on body weight, infants and young children will face the largest health burden. It may end up facing the huge risks by consuming rice pills, according to researchers.

“You are talking about an essential element in crops that feed billions of people, and when you think that more carbon dioxide and warmer temperatures can greatly affect the amount of arsenic in that basic element, the amount of health consequences related to research changes around it, and outperforms the climate change, at Columbia University.

But everyone should not suddenly stop eating rice as a result. Although the team found that the amount of analogous arsenic in rice is higher than many other plants, it is still generally low. The main variable is the amount of rice that a person eats. If you are among the largest part of the world that consumes rice several times a week, this healthy burden that looms on the horizon can apply to you, but if you do it intermittently, says Ziska, an inorganic arsenic that may end up to a “big deal”.

In this way, the study’s expectations may deepen existing global and social equality, as the great reason has long been ruled by Rice as one of the most devouring pills that devour it because it is also among the most affordable prices.

In addition to alleviating global greenhouse gas emissions – what Zeska calls “a rainbow, rhinoceros, and stick icons” – adjustment efforts to avoid the future with toxic rice are rice farmers that are planted early in the season to avoid developing seeds under warmer temperatures, managing the best soil, and multiplying agriculture to reduce rice reduction.

Irrigation techniques can also be used to save water such as moisturizing and alternative drying, as rice fields can also be used and then allowed to dry in a cycle, to reduce these increasing health risks and The enormous methane fingerprint of grains. On a global scale, rice production represents approximately 8 percent of methane emissions of human activity-rice fields flooded by water are the ideal conditions of bacteria from methane.

“This is an area that I know is not exciting, and it does not have the same atmosphere as the end of the world, high sea levels, and category 10 storms.” “But I will tell you completely frankly that it will have the greatest impact in terms of humanity, because we all eat.”

This article originally appeared in GRIST on https://grist.org/food-and-griculture/the-ing-of-poisons-arsenic-is-building-t- Grist is a non-profit and independent media organization dedicated to the novel of climate solution stories and a fair future. Learn more about Grist.org