More than 1.5 million people a year killed by food poisoning

Unsafe food kills more than 1.5 million people a year and causes cases of more than 200 diseases, research from the World Health Organisation (WHO) has shown. In its first major assessment of the impact of food contamination in more than a decade, the WHO found that unsafe food leads to around 885 million illnesses annually, costing the global economy an estimated $647bn in lost productivity.

While bacteria, viruses and parasites are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, it is actually toxic heavy metals that cause the lion’s share − some 73pc − of the fatalities, according to the report, which was published in The Lancet Global Health. “Food safety is not an abstract issue: it concerns every meal, every family, every day,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “Unsafe food has always been a major public health concern, but until now, we did not have a full picture of its colossal human and economic cost. These new estimates change the game.” The research draws on data from 2000 to 2021. It is the first time the WHO has published research on food contamination since 2010, when it estimated that around half a million people died from food-borne illnesses annually.

However, that report only examined the impact of bacteria, viruses and parasites. And, while food-safety standards have generally improved since the turn of the century, the impact of contamination with metals, particularly arsenic and lead, had not previously been included. Both metals occur naturally in soil but are also released into the environment through industrial processes like coal-burning and metal-smelting. Over time, exposure can disrupt cellular function and damage organs, increasing the risk of cancers of the skin, lung, liver, and bladder among other tissues, irreversible brain damage, heart disease and kidney failure.

Rice is particularly vulnerable to heavy metal contamination because it is grown in flooded fields and readily absorbs contaminated water. South-East Asia and Africa, where regulations on heavy metals in farming are far less stringent, are the worst-affected regions. It is thought that roughly one billion people are regularly exposed to heavy metals via their food. Bacteria also remain a major cause of food-borne illness and death.