MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Up to 10% of rice sold in Chinese markets tainted with heavy metals

However experts say pollution is confined to a few specific regions

Recent research has concluded that 10% of the rice sold in China’s markets is likely to be tainted with heavy metals, but agricultural experts said the pollution is confined to particular regions and there is no call for panic.

The report comes from the Nanjing Agricultural University's Institute of Resource, Ecosystem and Environment of Agriculture.

After taking samples of 91 kinds of rice collected from markets in six agricultural regions in China in 2007, researchers found 10% of the rice samples was laced with cadmium - a heavy metal that is associated with high blood pressure, bone fractures and pain if high concentrations of it accumulate in a person's body, according to a report in Century Weekly magazine's Feb 14 issue.

The research team, led by Professor Pan Genxing, sallied forth again in 2008, this time concentrating on the country's southern region. It found that over 60% of the rice samples it took were tainted with cadmium. In some samples, the cadmium level was equal to five times of the legal maximum.

China, which produces and consumes more rice than any other country, grows nearly 200 million tons of rice a year. If 10% of that total is contaminated with cadmium, then roughly 20 million tons may be tainted, according to the report.

Pan and other experts said the pollution is confined to a few specific regions, so there is no reason for a general panic.

Shang Qi, a researcher from Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, said: “Cadmium tainting is prevalent in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, Guizhou and Hunan provinces, but not other parts of the country.”

“So it would be hasty to conclude that 10% of the rice sold on the market is contaminated with cadmium,” he said. “The original findings only said that it was 10% of the samples collected that were tainted.”

Shang is taking part in a China nationwide study of the pollution and ailments caused by heavy metals. The work was commissioned by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Environmental Protection and is expected to be published next year.

“Much of the cadmium comes from the chemical waste of local blast furnaces, and rice absorbs more cadmium than any other crop,” said Pan.

He said city residents should not over concern themselves with rice's ability to take in cadmium, because the grain sold in big cities usually comes from a diverse array of regions and farmlands, thus lowering the risk of “being poisoned”.

“The real victims are the farmers who live in or around these polluted areas,” he added. “All of what they eat comes from the field. So cadmium is very likely to accumulate in their bodies, and endanger their health.”