Is climate change increasing the levels of toxic arsenic in our rice?

In Focus by The Hindu

When it comes to food, most Indians cannot imagine a day without rice. Lunch is rice, and rice is lunch – and rice is also sometimes breakfast or dinner or just part of a number of other food items we consume. But how healthy is the rice we are eating? Scientists have known for a while now that a lot of rice contains some amount of arsenic. A new study that was published in The Lancet Planetary Health last month, however, had some newer, more worrying findings: it found that with rising carbon emissions and rising temperatures, the arsenic levels in rice will rise. The study was conducted over a 10-year period on 28 different strains of paddy rice at four different locations in China. Arsenic is a known carcinogen – it is linked to cancers including lung and bladder cancer as well as to other serious health conditions.

So what does this study mean for India, which is a large rice-growing and rice-eating country and one that is also experiencing climate change effects? What does arsenic do to your body in the long term? Are there methods to grow rice that decrease the amount of arsenic in it? What can you do to make the rice you are eating at home safer?

Guests: Lewis Ziska, associate rofessor, environmental health sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University and Keeve Nachman, professor of environmental health and engineering, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Host: Zubeda Hamid

Edited by Jude Francis Weston

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