High Levels of Cancer-Causing Arsenic in Rice – So Why Isn’t It Regulated in Our Food?
There are two sides to rice: the grain that feeds half the world – and the primary carcinogenic source of inorganic arsenic in our diet.
Arsenic is a natural occurring element that is ubiquitous in the environment. It is present primarily as inorganic arsenic, which is highly toxic.
What sets rice apart is that it is the only major crop that is grown under flooded conditions. It is this flooding that releases inorganic arsenic, normally locked up in soil minerals, which makes it available for the plant to uptake. Rice has, typically, ten times more inorganic arsenic than other foods and, as the European Food Standards Authority have reported, people who eat a lot of rice are exposed to worrying concentrations. Chronic exposure can cause a range of health problems including developmental problems, heart disease, diabetes and nervous system damage. However, most worrying are lung and bladder cancers.
Children of most concern
The first food that most people eat is rice porridge, thought suitable for weaning as rice is low in allergens, has good textural properties and tastes bland. As babies are rapidly growing they are at a sensitive stage of development and are known to be more susceptible to inorganic arsenic than adults.
Babies and young children under five also eat around three times more food on a body weight basis than adults, which means that, relatively, they have three times greater exposures to inorganic arsenic from the same food item.
The rice product market for young children, which includes biscuit crackers and cereals is booming. If the child is gluten intolerant then rice breads and rice milks can be added to this list. Gluten intolerant adults are also high rice consumers, as are those people of South-East Asian origin.
Rice milk is so high in inorganic arsenic that the UK Food Standards Agency issued the advice that children under the age of four-and-a-half should not drink rice milk. Despite this, you would be hard-pressed to locate this advice on product packing or displays.
Where are the regulations?
While there is tight regulation around inorganic arsenic in our water supplies in Europe but none for food, yet in Europe only 5% of our inorganic arsenic comes from water and 95% from food. Bottled water in the EU is around 50 times lower in inorganic arsenic water concentrations than rice. Therefore, you would need to drink five litres of water to get the equivalent arsenic dose of eating a small 100g (dry weight packet) portion of rice. The failure to regulate rice in food is unsustainable and needs to be rectified.
