Toxic Mining Threatens Southeast Asia's Food Basket

0:00On April 29th, fishermen along Thailand's Mekong River are pulling in tiny halls these days, like 75-year-old Souk Jaiyana, who's barely, scraping by because folks won't buy the catch. Toxic runoff from rare earth mines upstream in Myanmar and Laos is contaminating the water, hitting the river that feeds 70 million people across. Southeast Asia, with their fish, farms, and livelihoods. Demand for these minerals is exploding for phones, electric cars, and military gear, fueling hundreds of unregulated mines along the tributaries. Myanmar loans shipped over $4.2 billion worth of China since 2017, and the Civil War there is spreading the operations, even wider into Laos. Farmers like 63-year-old La Boon Ruong in northern Thailand are irrigating crops, rice, bananas, garlic, with poison river water, fearing it. Paints their exports worth over $10 billion last year. Communities, including Lahoo Hill tribes, are losing their fishing traditions,

1:01while heavy metals like arsenic and mercury threaten cancer, organ, damage, and kids' brains. Scientists have confirmed high levels in fish, sediment, and water from spots like the cock and ruok rivers, spotting tumors and weird colors on, catfish. They're pushing back with a smartphone app for fishers to lock suspicious catches, building a citizen database but border chaos limits bigger. Fixes, this mining rush could hit harder than dams or pass wars, experts say, turning Southeast Asia's food basket, toxic, unless the global appetite for rare. Earths, cools off. I'm Cory with the Story. That's your Global News Update, AI-powered and always on.