Abstract
With the rapid economic expansion, environmental degradation has become increasingly sever during the past three decades. Soil pollutions associated with toxic organic compounds and heavy metals have been identified in China. The accumulation of heavy metals in soils and its impact on food safety is of increasing concern. It has been reported that more than 20 million ha of land have been contaminated with heavy metals that can result in the potential health risks to human beings and soil ecosystems. This can potentially jeopardize the food security in China. Accumulation of heavy metals in suburb and rural soils is closely related to many anthropogenic activities, such as application of fertilizers and pesticides, irrigation of wastewater, discharge of mining, improper disposal of metal containing wastes, land application of animal manures, sewage sludge and coal combustion residues. Arable crops and vegetables in suburb and rural can take up heavy metals from contaminated soils, which is one of the main pathways of introducing heavy metals to human food chain. Events related to soil and vegetable contamination, food safety and human health risks, e.g., rice and vegetables with elevated concentrations of cadmium, are often reported in the media in recent years. The Chinese government has recently developed a number of new policies for prevention of soils from further soil contamination, and remediation of contaminated soils. This presentation will provide a comprehensive review on heavy metal pollution in soils and its impacts on food security in China, and also summarize some new technologies for remediation of soils contaminated with heavy metals.
Highlights
Since food is the paramount necessity of the people, food security is the prerequisite for human survival and the fundamental guarantee for human healthy
This presentation will provide a comprehensive review on heavy metal pollution in soils and its impacts on food security in China, and summarize some new technologies for remediation of soils contaminated with heavy metals
The geological background levels of heavy metals are low in China, the mean concentrations of Cu (40.42), Pb (39.32), Zn (119.95), Ni (32.05), Cd (0.50) and Hg (0.31) mg/kg in agricultural soils of all the 15 cities are higher than their background values (Table 1)
Summary
Since food is the paramount necessity of the people, food security is the prerequisite for human survival and the fundamental guarantee for human healthy. The potential impact of heavy metals, pesticide residues and numerous adulterants on food security is one of the most important public health issues worldwide (Miraglia et al, 2009; Wei & Yang, 2010; Akhtar, 2013; Sun et al, 2013). Because of their toxicity, non-biodegradability and persistence, heavy metals are especially dangerous (Yan et al, 2013). Heavy metals in soil pose potential threats to the environment and can damage human health (Park et al, 2004; Al-Saleh et al, 2004; Komárek et al, 2008; Lu et al, 2011) through following approaches: 1) direct ingestion or contact with contaminated soil, 2) the food chain, 3) drinking of contaminated ground water, 4) reduction in food quality via phytotoxicity and 5) reduction in land usability for agricultural production causing food insecurity (McLaughlin et al, 2000; Ling et al, 2007)
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