A relatively small intervention could have a huge impact on a damaging condition that stalks children in the developing world. A new Stanford-led study shows that adding zinc to farmland soil can help prevent childhood stunting, a condition due to chronic undernutrition that is associated with poor brain development and long-lasting harmful consequences, such as reduced school performance and increased disease risks.
mineral availability in India, where more than a third of children under five suffer from stunting.
"Our results add to a growing body of literature suggesting that interventions like micronutrient-enriched fertilizers may have a positive effect on health," said study lead author Claire Morton, an undergraduate in mathematics andat Stanford University."This doesn't prove that those interventions would be cost-effective for India, but it's an exciting indication that they are worth testing.
The researchers analyzed health data from nearly 300,000 children and one million women across India with over 27 million soil tests drawn from a nationwide soil health program. They found that that the presence of zinc in soil helps prevent stunted childhood growth, and iron in soil helps keep hemoglobin—a protein inthat carries oxygen—at healthy levels. The results suggest that fortifying soil with minerals could be a beneficial health intervention.
The link between soil zinc and childhood stunting is particularly robust—a one standard deviation increase in satisfactory soil zinc tests is associated with approximately 11 fewer children stunted per 1,000, according to the research. As a result, the researchers suggest that theof using zinc-enriched fertilizers as health interventions deserves more consideration in India specifically and perhaps more generally.
," said study senior author David Lobell, the Gloria and Richard Kushel Director of Stanford's Center on Food Security and the Environment and professor of Earth system science in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.
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