Study.. Around 15% of the World’s Farmland Contaminated by Heavy Metals

A new study has revealed that between 14% and 17% of the world’s arable land is contaminated with at least one type of heavy metal.

Published in the journal Science, the study warns that this level of contamination poses a health risk to up to 1.4 billion people.

The research offers a unique and comprehensive overview of heavy metal pollution, based on a global analysis of over 796,000 soil samples from previous studies, combined with the use of algorithms.

The team of scientists, led by Di He, an environmental science expert at Tsinghua University in China, focused on areas where contamination levels of at least one of seven tested metals — including arsenic and cadmium — exceeded recommended thresholds for agricultural use and human health.