- Dennis CokeProfessor Gerald Lalor (centre), head of the International Centre for Environmental and Nuclear Sciences, (ICENS) entertains Ishenkumba A. Kahwa (left), Professor of Supramolecular Chemistry at the University of the West Indies, and Dr. Rufus Chaney, Senior Research Agronomist at the United States Department of Agriculture, prior to a lecture given by Dr. Chaney Tuesday afternoon at ICENS.
THE INTERNATIONAL Centre for Environmental and Nuclear Sciences (ICENS) says it now has the capability to track 50 elements found in Jamaican soils and by year end plans to make its findings known on the effect they have on the foods Jamaicans eat.
ICENS is currently assessing 'food chain risk', and is looking at the metals and other substances found in soil and determining the effects they might have on the human body once consumed in foods grown in those soils.
"We plan to analyse every plant and food stuff," said Professor Gerald Lalor, head of ICENS, a research-based institute of the University of the West Indies. "In 6-9 months we will be able to say what is in Jamaica's foods and what it means."
On Tuesday, American Dr. Rufus Chaney, a guest of ICENS, presented a lecture on cadmium in soils and the risk of cadmium poisoning that sought to assure scientists, agriculturists, and university students present that the substance was not as big a health risk as previous research had shown.
Chaney, a senior scientist with the United States Department of Agriculture, with over 30 years the department, has done extensive research on cadmium, a metallic element more commonly associated with batteries.
"Cadmium is not cadmium is not cadmium," said the USDA scientist in what was to become a litany throughout the lecture. "It's all those other factors that allow it to be absorbed."
He said Tuesday that the substance enters foods when grown in contaminated soils, but has been found to have an adverse health effect in humans only when it enters rice, and that rice is then milled and consumed.
Milling, he said, reduces significantly the nutritional content of rice, mainly the zinc and some iron. Those substances, as well as calcium, tend to neutralise the effect of cadmium in the body. Where the body is properly nourished, any cadmium that it absorbs is automatically flushed from the system, the scientist said.
Poisonings
Citing cases in Japan and New Zealand, and comparing the two, Chaney noted that his research shows that rice that was contaminated, milled and consumed in Japan presented health problems. The areas where the poisonings were most pronounced, he noted, showed a high concentration of rice as the main part of the diet.
New Zealanders consume oysters high in cadmium, but with no health effects, Chaney said. The diet deficiency, he argued, was the core issue, not the fact that cadmium had been consumed.
"No one had the disease except the rice eaters," he said.
Cadmium poisoning impacts first the kidneys, but the condition is treatable with additional protein; it also causes osteomalacia and osteoporosis or bone disease; and workers get kidney stones, said Chaney. He noted however, that there is no real evidence that it causes cancer and hypertension in humans, though research with rats has produced those results.
The United States had its own problems with sun flowers grown in cadmium contaminated soil, with the result that sunflower seeds, an economically viable export product that is consumed by a health-conscious market, was showing cadmium levels of .3 parts to a million, whereas the standard is .1 part per million.
Though arguing that the seeds were safe in the context of a nutritional diet, Chaney said the US was forced to address the levels as Europe refused categorically to buy the seeds.
In Jamaica, while cadmium is said to be present in some soils, Chaney said exporters had no reason to be concerned since tubers such as yams and potatoes, tend not to absorb the cadmium.
