Ploughing, and some fertilisers can help farmers reduce plants' uptake of the dangerous elements, and binding agents can be added to animal feed to reduce their uptake from the gut, he added.
Another misunderstanding leads to the fear that antibiotic resistance could be transferred from plants to bacteria in the human gut, creating dangerous pathogens.
Vice President Santos talks of this spraying being ineffective and insists the plants should be dug up by hand, and this unit was the first to do this highly dangerous work.