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Tests of agricultural produce including the Korean staples of rice and cabbage grown near 44 closed mines across the country have detected unsafe lead and cadmium levels in a considerable number of them. Lead exceeded the permissible level in 27.5 percent of samples collected from rice fields within 4 km from a used mine, and cadmium in 8.1 percent. Lead harms the nervous and reproduction systems and can lowers children's intellect. Cadmium softens bones and causes itai-itai disease.
We must urgently discover the exact degree of contamination in farm products and the contamination channels. Pollution diseases are often aggravated when people are exposed to them for a long time without knowing their causes. Itai-itai disease patients began to emerge in Toyama prefecture in Japan in 1910, but it was not until 1968 that cadmium leaking from disused mines was confirmed as the cause. By drinking and eating contaminated water and food without knowing it, many people died without knowing why.
The country has a total of 936 disused ore mines, with 44 of them judged highly likely to cause contamination covered in the survey. We must investigate the farm products grown near all of them, and check up on the health of residents as soon as possible. Any farmland where water or soil are contaminated must become idle.
The EU has set permissible levels of heavy metals like lead and cadmium for most agricultural products. Even China has dome so. But Korea, the worldĄŻs 12th largest economy, only set maximum levels for rice, and in the case of cadmium that took until the year 2000. There is no basis for any government action on other produce even if heavy metal contamination is found in them.
We must stop cadmium rice and lead cabbage leading to a full-fledged food panic. Every year we see new food scandals: dumplings made of waste, parasite eggs in kimchi, carcinogenic dyes in pickled vegetables. In the end, it often turns out to have been much ado about nothing. If the alarm about heavy metal contamination has been exaggerated and causes a needless scare, farmers will suffer immediately.
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