Image

Michael Bank, adjunct associate professor of environmental conservation at UMass Amherst, was part of an international research team that recently published a study in Science announcing the team’s global-scale machine learning model on toxic metal pollution and its potential effects on food systems, water quality and risks to human health. The team developed a new state-of-the-art machine learning model to develop a global-scale human risk assessment and distribution map using nearly 800,000 data points of some of the most toxic metals known to humans.

Bank says that toxic metals are “an important public health issue that affects everyone and has garnered significant interest from policymakers from the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the UN Chemicals and Waste and Pollution Prevention panel and the 2025 UN Global Environmental Outlook program.” 

The team reports that, globally, up to 1.4 billion people already live in areas of considerable pollution from arsenic, cadmium, cobalt, chromium, copper, nickel and lead. This threatens food security, drinking water, biodiversity and public health. 

“The research team members are also deeply concerned that this problem will only worsen at a faster rate, especially as human societies continue to conduct incautious mining on land, coastal areas and in deep ocean seafloor environments in search of metals, minerals and other in-demand resources to support supposedly ‘green’ technologies,” Bank concludes. 

One of the key research findings was the discovery of a globally distributed “metal enriched corridor” stretching all the way from southeast Asia through southwestern Europe that closely tracked natural and anthropogenic toxic metal sources, historical mining activities, and spatial patterns of human civilization including ancient Greek civilizations, the Roman Empire, Persian culture, ancient India and Yangtze River Chinese culture. 

The paper also highlights the inherent complexities, scope and scale of contaminant cycling and exposure. New pollution models are in development for coastal marine ecosystems and the Arctic Ocean, and the team looks forward to sharing their findings with the scientific community and policymakers later this year.

The complete article, “Global soil pollution by toxic metals threatens agriculture and human health” is available from Science.