Global soil pollution by toxic metals threatens agriculture and human health
“Researchers have created the first global map of toxic metals in soils, showing that vast swaths of land are contaminated from a combination of factors including industrial pollution and the erosion of bedrock.[…] The map suggests that anywhere from 900 million to 1.4 billion people worldwide could be exposed to elevated levels of at least one toxic metal, with 14% to 17% of global farmland potentially affected.” Science Adviser, 18 April 2025

Science, 17 April 2025

Global soil pollution by toxic metals threatens agriculture and human health

Toxic metal pollution is ubiquitous in soils, yet its worldwide distribution is unknown. We analyzed a global database of soil pollution by arsenic, cadmium, cobalt, chromium, copper, nickel, and lead at 796,084 sampling points from 1493 regional studies and used machine learning techniques to map areas with exceedance of agricultural and human health thresholds. We reveal a previously unrecognized high-risk, metal-enriched zone in low-latitude Eurasia, which is attributed to influential climatic, topographic, and anthropogenic conditions. This feature can be regarded as a signpost for the Anthropocene era. We show that 14 to 17% of cropland is affected by toxic metal pollution globally and estimate that between 0.9 and 1.4 billion people live in regions of heightened public health and ecological risks.