The Ministry of Land and Resources is compiling a nationwide “pollution map” to gauge the level of heavy-metal contamination in soil due to human activities, including collecting soil samples from across the country and testing levels of 78 chemical elements found in both topsoil – less than 25 cm deep – and in samples from at least a meter underground. No timetable for the survey was given, nor whether the map would be publicly released. Recent reports said that almost half of the rice in Guangzhou was found to be tainted with cadmium, a heavy metal that can damage kidneys and bones. Researchers have found that soil collected in parts of the mid- and lower reaches of the Yangtze River contained high levels of cadmium, mercury, lead and arsenic. Some cities were found to have “abnormal levels of radiation”. Heavy-metal pollution in soil has been expanding in densely populated eastern China, compared with samples collected in the 1990s. But some analysts have voiced doubts about the new survey. Authorities have kept under wraps soil-pollution data gathered during a five-year nationwide investigation, dubbing them a “state secret”. Chinese consumers are becoming increasingly worried about the safety of crops and vegetables grown in contaminated soil. A study published last year in the Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, which said that immigrants to New York from mainland China had higher levels of lead, cadmium and mercury in their blood than those from other Asian countries, went viral online  Xinhua and CCTV posted a link to the study. Statistics from the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) released in 2011 show 10 million hectares of farmland, or 8.3% of arable land in the country, were polluted. Farmland in some prosperous coastal regions and industrial areas on higher ground were more seriously polluted.