Climate Change Raises Arsenic Levels in Rice

The impact increases cancer amid health risks, reveals a study

- 

Climate change could be resulting in higher levels of arsenic in rice, potentially increasing lifetime cancer and health risks for people in Asian countries by 2050, according to a new study published in The Lancet Planetary Health journal.

Researchers from Columbia University, US, explained that an increase in temperatures above 2 degrees Celsius and rising levels of carbon dioxide could be causing changes in soil chemistry, favouring arsenic, which gets more easily absorbed into a rice grain.