Food from Malaysia's ex-mining land toxic - report
Date: 26-Feb-02
Country: MALAYSIA
Crops grown on former mining land in Bidor, a town in the northern state of Perak, have shown high levels of arsenic, mercury, cadmium and lead in a study by researchers from a university and two state agencies, The Star daily reported.
The newspaper said about 90 percent of the fruits and vegetables produced there were sold nationwide and also exported.
It said fish bred in ex-mining ponds in Bidor were also found to contain PTEs, which when absorbed into human bodies can cause kidney and liver failure and cancer.
The study was done over three years by Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Forest Research Institute of Malaysia (FRIM) and the Mineral Research Centre to determine the concentration and distribution of heavy metals in ex-mining sites.
FRIM researcher Ang Lai Hoe was quoted as saying if high PTE levels persisted in food produced from ex-mining (areas), then new farmlands had to be allocated. "The ex-mining land can be used for timber production," he said.
Ang said there were 113,700 hectares (281,000 acres) of former mining land in Malaysia and 14.4 percent of it was in the form of water ponds, used extensively for aquaculture. About four percent had been turned into food production areas.
Ang said Bidor was chosen for the study as it was a famous tin mining town in the 1940s. Many in the town turned to farming when tin mining collapsed in the 1980s.