10 November 2026, Geneva: Contaminated food caused an estimated 866 million illnesses and 1.52 million deaths worldwide in 2021. That is according to a key findings report published by the World Health Organization on 4 November 2026, which also shows children under five carrying a share of the burden far out of proportion to their numbers. The report consolidates WHO’s 2026 edition of its global foodborne disease estimates, the first full update in more than a decade, which the agency first released in June ahead of World Food Safety Day.
Measured in disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), a metric that combines years of life lost to early death with years lived in ill health, foodborne disease cost 57.1 million healthy years of life in 2021. WHO says the total burden has fallen since 2000, but the figures remain large enough to put unsafe food alongside many better-known public health threats.
Microbes such as bacteria, viruses and parasites accounted for almost all illnesses, about 860 million cases. Deaths tell a different story. WHO found that chemical hazards were responsible for 73 percent of deaths linked to contaminated food in 2021. Within that group, inorganic arsenic accounted for 42 percent of chemical-related deaths and lead for 31 percent, with methylmercury also among the hazards assessed. Together, arsenic and lead in food were linked to more than one million deaths in a single year.
Children and the hardest-hit regions
Children under five make up about 9 percent of the world’s population but suffered nearly a third of all foodborne illness cases, mostly diarrhoeal disease. WHO calculated that young children face almost three times the risk of illness compared with older children and adults. Diarrhoeal disease in early childhood is closely tied to undernutrition, because repeated infections reduce the body’s ability to absorb nutrients, which in turn raises vulnerability to further infection.
Geographically, the burden is concentrated. The African and South-East Asian regions together accounted for nearly three-quarters of all foodborne illnesses and 60 percent of global deaths. These are also regions where a large share of food moves through informal markets, where cold chains are limited and where testing capacity for contaminants is often weakest.
WHO put the economic cost at about US$310 billion in lost productivity in 2021, or US$647 billion when adjusted for differences in living costs between countries. The agency says fuller economic burden figures will be finalized in 2027.
The estimates were produced with advice from WHO’s Foodborne Disease Burden Epidemiology Reference Group, an independent expert panel. They cover 42 infectious and chemical hazards across all 194 WHO member states, with a time series from 2000 to 2021 and 2021 as the reference year. For the first time, WHO has published national-level estimates for every member state, rather than only regional figures. The work combined systematic reviews of published evidence, structured expert judgement and statistical modelling to fill gaps where national data are missing. It also drew on a study by Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands on which foods carry which hazards.
The 2026 edition keeps the 31 hazards covered in WHO’s previous estimates, which used 2010 data. It adds others, including metals, rotavirus and Trypanosoma cruzi, the parasite that causes Chagas disease. WHO says the new figures supersede all of its earlier global foodborne disease estimates. Because methods and coverage have changed, direct comparisons with the older numbers should be made with care.
The agency also acknowledges significant gaps. Pesticide residues, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS, the so-called “forever chemicals”), antimicrobial-resistant bacteria and several other hazards could not be included because of insufficient data. That means the true burden of unsafe food is likely higher than the headline totals.
Links to farming and food supply
The dominance of arsenic and lead among chemical deaths points directly to the farm and the supply chain. Inorganic arsenic enters food mainly through crops grown in contaminated soil or irrigated with arsenic-rich groundwater. Rice is a well-documented route, because flooded paddies make arsenic more available to the plant. Lead can enter food through contaminated soils, industrial pollution, certain spices and food processing or storage equipment. Reducing these exposures typically involves a mix of water and soil management, crop and variety choices, monitoring of imports and enforcement of maximum residue limits. Much of that work falls to agriculture and trade authorities rather than health ministries.
On the microbial side, many of the leading causes of diarrhoeal disease are linked to animal-source foods, fresh produce and the water used in irrigation and food preparation. That places farm hygiene, slaughter practices and market sanitation at the centre of prevention.
WHO has released the underlying data through an interactive online dashboard and published the code used for the estimates, along with a series of hazard-specific papers in The Lancet Global Health.
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