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    Mongas FST171 J Week5 PDF

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    Kathlyn Micah Mongas
    Soil pollution poses a major threat to food security and safety. The UN FAO identified several human activities that contribute to soil pollution, including industrialization, mining, war, and excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides in agriculture. A 1990 study found 22 million hectares of land afflicted by soil pollution. Recent studies show worsening levels of soil pollution in many countries. For example, 16% of China's soil and 19% of its agricultural land was found to be polluted in 2015. Soil pollution is difficult to detect without proper analysis and can contaminate crops and livestock through irrigation water or feed. A study in the Philippines found that common rice and fish varieties contained unsafe levels of heavy metals like lead, showing

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    Mongas FST171 J Week5 PDF

    Uploaded by

    Kathlyn Micah Mongas
    28 views2 pages
    Soil pollution poses a major threat to food security and safety. The UN FAO identified several human activities that contribute to soil pollution, including industrialization, mining, war, and excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides in agriculture. A 1990 study found 22 million hectares of land afflicted by soil pollution. Recent studies show worsening levels of soil pollution in many countries. For example, 16% of China's soil and 19% of its agricultural land was found to be polluted in 2015. Soil pollution is difficult to detect without proper analysis and can contaminate crops and livestock through irrigation water or feed. A study in the Philippines found that common rice and fish varieties contained unsafe levels of heavy metals like lead, showing

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    Soil pollution poses a major threat to food security and safety. The UN FAO identified several human activities that contribute to soil pollution, including industrialization, mining, war, and excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides in agriculture. A 1990 study found 22 million hectares of land afflicted by soil pollution. Recent studies show worsening levels of soil pollution in many countries. For example, 16% of China's soil and 19% of its agricultural land was found to be polluted in 2015. Soil pollution is difficult to detect without proper analysis and can contaminate crops and livestock through irrigation water or feed. A study in the Philippines found that common rice and fish varieties contained unsafe levels of heavy metals like lead, showing

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    28 views2 pages

    Mongas FST171 J Week5 PDF

    Uploaded by

    Kathlyn Micah Mongas
    Soil pollution poses a major threat to food security and safety. The UN FAO identified several human activities that contribute to soil pollution, including industrialization, mining, war, and excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides in agriculture. A 1990 study found 22 million hectares of land afflicted by soil pollution. Recent studies show worsening levels of soil pollution in many countries. For example, 16% of China's soil and 19% of its agricultural land was found to be polluted in 2015. Soil pollution is difficult to detect without proper analysis and can contaminate crops and livestock through irrigation water or feed. A study in the Philippines found that common rice and fish varieties contained unsafe levels of heavy metals like lead, showing

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    Mongas, Kathlyn Micah P.

    October 19, 2022


    4 - BSFT FST 171 Assignment #3

    Soil pollution is one of the most impactful types of pollution on food crops, as it
    directly affects the crop yield and food safety of the crops. According to the UN Food and
    Agriculture Organization (FAO), soil pollution is a result of the presence of a substance at
    high amounts or concentrations than the normal. These substances mostly originate from
    human activities, however, there are some cases where the contaminants are naturally present
    in the soil and accumulate to lethal levels. And more often than not, soil pollution cannot be
    visually or directly assessed, making it difficult to detect without the proper methods and
    equipment. Examples of human activities that the FAO has identified to have great
    contribution to soil pollution are industrialization, mining activities, wars, and the intensified
    use of artificial pesticides in agriculture. A study by the International Soil Reference and
    Information Centre (ISRIC) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) done
    back in 1990’s have revealed that an estimated 22 million hectares of land have been afflicted
    by soil pollution. Recent studies have shown increased occurrences of soil pollution in
    various nations: the Chinese Environmental Protection Ministry reported back in 2015 that
    16% of their nation’s soil has been polluted and 19% of their agricultural land have been
    categorized as polluted; approximately 3 million potentially polluted sites have been
    identified in different European Economic Zones and the West Balkans back in 2014; and an
    estimated 80,000 acres of land have been identified as contaminated sites in Australia back in
    2010 (FAO, 2018). These numbers have also grown in the more recent years and has reached
    a very alarming state due to the huge number of identified polluted areas.

    The FAO has identified agriculture to be one of the human activities that have the
    greatest contribution to soil pollution, mainly due to the excessive or inefficient use of
    fertilizers and pesticides. Excessive use of fertilizers and manure, of which its main
    components are nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), can lead to adjustment of the soil’s pH and
    salinity, increased chances of heavy metal accumulation, eutrophication, and nitrites
    accumulation, all of which negatively impacts soil health. Some fertilizers have also been
    identified to be the source of heavy metals in soil. There were also some instances wherein
    crops have been contaminated due to contaminated irrigation water that has leached into the
    soil, especially for heavy metals that tend to bioaccumulate. Livestock, which also depend on
    crops, can become contaminated as well due to the consumption of contaminated feed from
    crops. These problems pose a huge threat to food security since access to safe food can be
    very limited due to the health risks that result from consuming contaminated crops.

    An occurrence of such has been observed in the study by Solidum (2014) on the
    presence of lead, a heavy metal, in Filipino staple food, which in this case, is rice and fish
    that was obtained from various markets in Metro Manila, Philippines. The researcher
    gathered ten different varieties of rice and fish during the cold, dry season of the year 2011
    and the lead levels were analyzed using a Flame AAS and compared to the allowable
    standard limits set by the US Ennvironmental Protection Agency (EPA). The results of the
    study have shown that all the ten varieties of rice contained lead, and two of those have been
    determined to have lead levels that went beyond the acceptable limits for lead of 0.5 ppm,
    namely the regular Malagkit rice and the National Food Authority (NFA) rice brands. As for
    the fish, all the ten samples tested were determined to contain lead amounts beyond the
    acceptable limit. These fish varieties include tilapia, tanguigue, galunggong, dalagang bukid,
    and matambaka, all of which are common fish varieties consumed in Filipino households.
    According to the researcher, however, that a similar study on fish that was conducted in 2012
    showed that some varieties of fish that were the same for both studies had lead levels that fall
    within the acceptable limits. These findings show that heavy metal accumulation has become
    common in various staple food and if not addressed properly, can negatively affect food
    security and may cause adverse health effects to those who consume the contaminated food.

    References:
    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265470357_Heavy_Metal_Lead_in_Filipino_Staple
    _Food_as_Studied_in_Metro_Manila_Philippines
    http://www.db.zs-intern.de/uploads/1525681402-SoilPollution.pdf
    https://www.globalagriculture.org/whats-new/news/en/33185.html
    https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/soil-pollution-risk-our-health-and-food-security

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