In a surprising turn of events, our changing climate is having a detrimental impact on food safety, making increased monitoring essential. 

By Jed Thomas 

As the impacts of climate change deepen across global systems, food safety is emerging as a major, underappreciated front.  

Among the latest concerns is rice, a staple food for more than half the world’s population, becoming increasingly toxic due to higher levels of inorganic arsenic.  

For monitoring professionals, this trend points to a growing need for expanded environmental, agricultural, and food testing capabilities, with particular focus on high-precision arsenic detection. 

How do we know that arsenic in rice is increasing? 

Recent research published in The Lancet Planetary Health shows that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide and warmer temperatures significantly increase the amount of inorganic arsenic absorbed by rice plants.  

In controlled experiments across China over nearly a decade, scientists found that arsenic concentrations in rice grains could rise by up to 44% under climate scenarios likely by 2050.  

Given rice’s global importance as a staple crop, the public health implications are profound, including millions of additional cancer cases worldwide if left unaddressed. 

The root of the problem lies in how rice is traditionally cultivated.  

Paddy fields, flooded to suppress weeds, create anaerobic soil conditions that naturally mobilize arsenic compounds.  

Under higher temperatures and with more carbon in the soil, microbial activity accelerates, making arsenic more bioavailable to rice plants.  

This situation could worsen dramatically unless new practices and technologies are adopted. 

How monitoring will have to change 

Monitoring the growing risk will require a much more integrated and proactive approach than is typical today.  

Traditional food safety testing of final rice products, while still essential, will not be enough.  

Monitoring must begin at the field level. Soil arsenic speciation, irrigation water quality, soil oxygen levels, and real-time plant uptake all need to be systematically tracked. 

Instruments capable of detecting trace levels of arsenic will play a pivotal role. 

Inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) remains the most sensitive and accurate method for analysing both food and environmental samples, including rice grains and soil extracts.  

To specifically identify the chemical form of arsenic, critical for assessing health risks, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) combined with ICP-MS will become increasingly necessary. 

On-site and near-real-time monitoring are also likely to expand. Portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) analysers, while somewhat limited in sensitivity for food products, can be valuable for rapid screening of soils in the field.  

Water quality sensors adapted to detect arsenic in irrigation sources, along with automated soil gas analysers monitoring redox conditions, can provide early warning signals when paddy conditions start to favour arsenic mobilization. 

Monitoring professionals will also need to become more adept at linking datasets. 

Combining arsenic monitoring with greenhouse gas measurements in rice paddies could offer a broader picture, since the same anaerobic conditions that drive arsenic uptake also accelerate methane emissions. 

Will regulation tighten? 

Looking ahead, regulatory bodies are likely to impose tighter controls on arsenic levels in rice, both at the point of production and at the consumer end.  

While the European Union and China have begun to set stricter thresholds, global standards are patchy and enforcement inconsistent.  

Improved monitoring networks, based on robust, transparent data, will be critical to ensure compliance and to protect vulnerable populations who rely heavily on rice for daily nutrition. 

Rice will remain a critical food source for billions, and widespread shifts in dietary patterns are unlikely.  

The challenge is to intervene early and intelligently, using monitoring technologies and best practices to limit arsenic exposure before it becomes an even greater public health crisis. 

As climate change reshapes the chemistry of agriculture, monitoring professionals will be tasked not only with measuring emerging risks but also with helping design the solutions that keep food safe in a warming world. 

Published Date: April 30, 2025