The ‘King of Poisons’ Is Growing in the World’s Rice Supply

A new study reports that global warming and extra CO2 are basically turning our worldwide rice supply into a huge sponge for inorganic arsenic, which you might better know as the “king of poisons.”

In the study, published in Lancet Planetary Health, researchers led by Donming Wang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences spent nearly a decade trudging through muddy rice paddies to figure out that climate change is supercharging the uptake of the carcinogen arsenic in rice plants.

As Grist first reported, the planet is warming, causing an excess of CO2 to linger in our atmosphere. That CO2 is eaten up by rice plants, which are essentially being overfed and developing bigger roots as a result. Those roots are then bubbling up inorganic arsenic. As a result, communities for which rice is a dietary staple could see an elevated risk of cancer and disease by 2050.

This is happening to some of the most commonly eaten rice varieties in the world, rice that billions rely on for sustenance every day, especially in countries like India, China, and Vietnam, where nearly every meal involves rice in some capacity or another.

Inorganic arsenic is linked to cancer, heart disease, and a variety of other unpleasant illnesses. The EU and China have suggestions for limits, but enforcement is weak. In the U.S., we’ve only put a cap on arsenic in baby rice cereal, because only babies are worth protecting, I guess.

The irony of it all is that rice is also a major producer of methane, thus contributing to its own rising arsenic levels, accounting for eight percent of all methane emissions involving human activity in the world.

Thankfully, as Grist also reports, there are new, less farty varieties of rice. Let’s just hope farmers around the world start planting these newer varieties and that overall the human race starts doing a little bit more to combat climate change than the relative nothing we’re currently doing.