FDA: No Immediate Risk Is Found From Arsenic Levels in Rice

[Eugene]

Source: New York Times

No Immediate Risk Is Found From Arsenic Levels in Rice

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: September 6, 2013

WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration announced Friday that it had found no evidence that current levels of arsenic in rice pose an immediate health risk.

The finding comes two months after the agency proposed new limits on arsenic in apple juice. A public outcry had caused the agency to look at the issue more closely.

The agency tested more than 1,300 types of rice and rice products, like rice cakes and infant cereals, and found that arsenic levels ranged from 3 to 7 micrograms per serving, amounts that the agency said were not hazardous to human health in the short term.

Most rice contains much higher levels of arsenic than apple juice does, said Keeve Nachman, a scientist who studies arsenic in food at the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University, but because there is such a wide variety of products made with it, and because it is present at such different levels, the analysis for rice is more complicated.

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Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/07/health/arsenic-levels-in-rice-products-not-a-health-risk-fda-says.html

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. From what I read on this, Ca, rice is cleaner than Louisiana rice

because of less soil contamination
and
brown rice tends to be much less exposed to arsenic
tho I don't know why that would be.

shit..is Nothing we eat safe anymore??

[Tumbulu]

2. It has to do with how much chicken litter

is used for fertilizer and how much of the land was once used for cotton. Cotton used to be defoliated with arsenic acid and they feed arsenic to conventional- NOT ORGANIC - chickens to get them to fatten up more quickly.

In N CA where the rice is grown there has not been any big cotton production and I do not think that the state of CA allows chickens to be fed arsenic, unlike some of the other big chicken producing states. But I am not sure about that.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. Ahhh....thank you for the memory re-boot.

I did not know chickens were FED arsenic....
now last night's chicken dinner is looking ugly....