Last week, Professor Dave Polya hosted an event as part of University of Manchester policy week. The topic was “Poisoning the world’s poor: how can we reduce their exposure to arsenic in water & food?” One of the invited speakers was Dr Debapriya Mondal who contributed to the discovery that rice is a major route of arsenic exposure in Bengal. In populations in West Bengal where people were not exposed to arsenic through other routes, they found elevated genotoxic effects, as measured by micronuclei (MN) in urothelial cells. Professor Andy Meharg from Queen’s University Belfast also shared some interesting research on arsenic contamination of rice throughout the world. Even in the UK, rice has a high arsenic concentration compared to other grains and there has been an increase in rice consumption in recent years.
Andy Meharg talking about arsenic in riceAndy’s work stimulated discussion on the role of government agencies in informing the public on the potential health risks of consuming rice and rice products containing high inorganic arsenic. The consensus seemed to be that more needs to be done to inform the public of these findings and to put in place stricter regulations on arsenic content in foods, particularly those targeted at young children. Andy has also worked in areas such as Bengal where arsenic in drinking water is an immediate and devastating problem. http://vimeo.com/73033724
You can also watch the channel 4 Dispatches documentary on this topic, “Rice, how safe is our food”.
By Helen Downie
In September, myself and a few other members of the Manchester Geomicrobiology group made the long journey out to Japan for the 17th International Conference on the Chemistry and Migration Behaviour of Actinides and Fission Products in the Geosphere – better known as Migration 2019. The conference series is renowned for being well attended and […]
Last week I attended my first Goldschmidt conference (and last conference during my PhD). The conference took place at the International Convention Centre in Barcelona from the 18th to the 23rd of August, where we had to spend over a week away from gloomy Manchester, what a concept! Although this conference was established to showcase […]
At the beginning of May, researchers from across the world met in Stockholm to discuss the successes of the Microbiology in Nuclear Waste Disposal (MIND) project, present their findings and discuss the future directions of research. From the Geomicrobiology Group at Manchester, Gina presented her work on radionuclide mobility in the presence of ISA and […]
During August, Sul and I travelled across the pond to ‘New’ England for the 2018 Goldschmidt Conference in Boston, Massachusetts. Goldschmidt is regarded as the foremost annual international conference on geochemistry and related subjects, and for the two of us, this was our second time presenting at this massive event. With the experience acquired last […]