The Director of the Research Centre for Climate Change and Food Security, Sulemana Issifu, is warning that if illegal mining is not halted, most of the food produced could be contaminated.

According to him, most of the communities where illegal mining activities occur are also producers of food crops. He explained that since the river bodies and soil are polluted, this affects the crops.

Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile on September 21, he stressed the urgent need to tackle these mining activities or risk having contaminated food on the market.

“First of all, we have established that crops have the potential to take up the heavy metals and secondarily, we have been able to trace that most of the top ten producers these foods, some of them are galamsey endemic areas. Which means that we are likely to pollute your food system by a certain margin or a certain percentage,” he said.

His comments come on the back of the Centre's latest research, which found some level of contamination in food.

Mr Issifu explained that the research found that crops have the potential to absorb heavy metals. It also revealed that most of the top 10 crop-producing areas are affected by illegal mining (galamsey). This, he said, means that the food system is consistently polluted by a certain percentage.

 “If you take 100 grams of corn, if you are going to eat 100 grams of corn by way of making banku or water every food you are going to make out of the corn, about 6 grams of that 100 grams is likely to be polluted because the corn could be coming from these galamsey epidemic areas that we have mapped,” he said.