{"id":460163,"date":"2026-07-16T11:05:44","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T09:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2026\/07\/16\/troppo-presente-nel-suolo-e-nel-cibo-nellue-il-problema-del-cadmio\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T12:15:53","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T10:15:53","slug":"excess-cadmium-in-soil-and-food-is-an-eu-concern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/07\/16\/excess-cadmium-in-soil-and-food-is-an-eu-concern\/","title":{"rendered":"Excess cadmium in soil and food is an EU concern"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels \u2013 The European Union has a serious problem with cadmium, a heavy metal with harmful effects on health that people ingest every day as a result of unsustainable agricultural practices. This warning appears in the working document<\/a> produced by the European Parliament\u2019s Centre for Studies and Research, which signals the issue from the title of the nine-page mini-report: “Cadmium contamination in the EU: a growing challenge.”\u200b<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

In a nutshell, data from 2026 confirm \u201cchronic EU-wide overexposure to cadmium<\/strong>.\u201d This is a problem, given that the heavy metal is toxic to the human body and causes \u201cirreversible kidney and bone damage.\u201d As the report explains, agriculture is the main cause of this growing and potentially harmful problem: at the EU level, \u201cphosphate fertilisers are the primary source of contamination<\/strong>, and contribute 55 per cent of the cadmium added to EU farmlands annually, causing the toxic heavy metal to accumulate in 45 per cent of agricultural soils <\/strong>faster than it can be removed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Almost half of the land used for grazing and farming should therefore be remediated, but it isn\u2019t, and the agricultural sector \u2014 despite having received support and measures like few others \u2014 continues to fuel a chain of cadmium contamination. The report says this also reflects \u201ccurrent regulations [that] are fragmented and scientifically insufficient,\u201d while the EU executive, bowing to the sector\u2019s demands, has avoided addressing the issue. The European Commission’s May 2026<\/a> fertiliser action plan<\/a> \u201cmissed the chance to set stricter targets<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the study calls into question the entire production model, as soil properties and erosion only partly explain the high concentration of cadmium in the soil. It instead singles out human activities, which have \u201csignificantly impacted these soils, with cadmium inputs increasing by 50 per cent during the 20th century due to sewage sludge spreading, waste dumping, mining, and industrial emissions, such as those from zinc smelters.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2023\/07\/05\/suoli-sani-2050-proposta-commissione-ue\/<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As a result, in the EU, the average cadmium exposure among adults (aged 18\u201365) is 2.04 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per week, which is 82 per cent of the tolerable intake set by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) of 2.5 \u00b5g\/kg of body weight per week. For children aged 1-3, it is even higher (4.85 \u00b5g\/kg body weight per week), for those aged 3 to 10 years (3.96 \u00b5g\/kg body weight per week), and for adolescents (2.2 \u00b5g\/kg body weight per week).<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

For everyone, the main problem is the food we eat \u2013 food grown on contaminated land. The research on this is clear: with regard to cadmium intake, “the main dietary vectors are identical across the EU: cereals and grain products (26.9 per cent), vegetables
\n(16.0 per cent), and starchy roots\/potatoes (13.2 per cent).” Some “made\u2011in” labels are more harmful than others, since regions with some of the highest average cadmium concentrations are found in Ireland, Germany, Spain, Poland and Slovenia. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The geopolitical aspects of the cadmium issue<\/h4>\n
How can this problem be resolved? One option could be to produce agricultural fertilisers from low-cadmium rocks. However, the study warns that the problem cannot be solved simply by switching to lower-cadmium phosphate sources,
\nbecause these sources may come with acute geopolitical risk, and this is precisely \u201cthe structural
\ndilemma which the Commission’s fertiliser action plan fails to resolve.”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\n
Specifically, the best solution to the problem would be Russian igneous deposits, a phosphate source with the lowest cadmium content. But these Russian resources are precisely what the EU seeks to depend on less, following the start of Moscow\u2019s war of aggression against Ukraine. The second- and third-largest suppliers of this type of product are Morocco and Egypt, respectively; however, unlike the cadmium-poor Russian raw material, they have high (Morocco) and medium-high (Egypt) concentrations.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\n
The EU has also imposed sanctions on Russian fertilisers<\/a>, but apparently not on phosphate rock: according to the study, data indicate that imports of Russian phosphate rock into the EU rose by 28 per cent in the first quarter of 2026 compared with the first quarter of 2025, reaching the highest level since the start of the war. That suggests that the EU is trying to address the issue of cadmium exposure and contamination while fuelling Moscow and its war machine.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heavy metals pose serious problems for the kidneys and bones. Human activities are in the firing line, and European agriculture continues to fuel a chain of poisoning. Children and teenagers are being overexposed, whilst the European Union is buying from Russia to address the problem. In defiance of sanctions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":494,"featured_media":460144,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25709,30961],"tags":[25855,34874,26639,25755,26281,26787,33394],"class_list":["post-460163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-agrifood-en","category-salute-en","tag-agriculture-en","tag-cadmio","tag-cancer-en","tag-news-parliament-en","tag-fertilizers-en","tag-food","tag-ue"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":460164,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460163\/revisions\/460164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}