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US rice imports 'contain harmful levels of lead'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: US rice imports 'contain harmful levels of lead'

#11

Post by nicksergeant »

We heard about this a year ago and cut almost 95% of the rice in our diet. Now we have a rice dish about once a month or less. There were even warnings that small children should avoid rice completely.

Unfortunately you just need to be proactive about what you put in your mouth, and don't assume that since you live in a "developed" country that everything sold is safe to eat.

Don't even get me started on the FDA's stance of "all chemicals used in consumer goods are considered safe until proven otherwise" stuff.

Re: US rice imports 'contain harmful levels of lead'

#12

Post by uvdiv »

Here's an abstract from the researcher, Tsanangurayi Tongesayi. Not this exact presentation, but apparently the same research:

Lead was present in all the foods samples and its concentration ranged from 4.3 to 17.9 µg/g. Some baby rice food had levels of Pb as high as 12.5±0.2 µg/g.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:d4lyxhr...

(Google Cache because of the intellectual property circus).

The FDA's recommended limit, expressed in total Pb ingested per day (only figure I could find), is

The FDA’s recommended Provisional Total Tolerable Intake Level (PTTIL) for lead in children less than 6 years of age is 6 μg lead/day. For children 7 years and older, the PTTIL is 15 μg lead/day. It increases to 75 μg lead/day for adults (USFDA 1993).

http://health.mo.gov/living/environment/hazsubstancesites/pd...

This limit can be exceeded with a fraction of a gram of rice (for small children) -- literally a single grain. You could eat a small bullet's weight of lead in a few hundred kg -- several years of eating.

And here's an FDA survey of the US food supply: 731 food products, about 10,000 samples, and nothing within orders of magnitude of this.

http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/FoodScienceResearch/TotalD...

(pp. 69-80). Notably, their rice samples (#50) had undetectable amounts of lead, at a detection threshold of 0.007 mg/kg (= µg/g).

(I'm beginning to suspect someone confused a mg/mcg/μg somewhere; that seems like the Occam's razor explanation. Otherwise, this looks really bad).

Re: US rice imports 'contain harmful levels of lead'

#13

Post by nicksergeant »

nicksergeant wrote: post #11

We heard about this a year ago and cut almost 95% of the rice in our diet. Now we have a rice dish about once a month or less. There were even warnings that small children should avoid rice completely. Unfortunately you just need to be proactive about what you put in your mouth, and don't assume that since you live in a "developed" country that everything sold is safe to eat. Don't even get me started on the FDA's st…

Sorry, not FDA, I meant EPA.

Re: US rice imports 'contain harmful levels of lead'

#14

Post by rdouble »

nicksergeant wrote: post #11

We heard about this a year ago and cut almost 95% of the rice in our diet. Now we have a rice dish about once a month or less. There were even warnings that small children should avoid rice completely. Unfortunately you just need to be proactive about what you put in your mouth, and don't assume that since you live in a "developed" country that everything sold is safe to eat. Don't even get me started on the FDA's st…

Couldn't you just buy rice grown in the USA?

Re: US rice imports 'contain harmful levels of lead'

#16

Post by nicksergeant »

rdouble wrote: post #14
nicksergeant wrote: post #11

We heard about this a year ago and cut almost 95% of the rice in our diet. Now we have a rice dish about once a month or less. There were even warnings that small children should avoid rice completely. Unfortunately you just need to be proactive about what you put in your mouth, and don't assume that since you live in a "developed" country that everything sold is safe to eat. Don't even get me started on the FDA's st…

Couldn't you just buy rice grown in the USA?

No, even US-grown rice suffers the same problem (not as the article, though). Basically rice in the southern US is grown in fields that used to be used for cotton, and the use of arsenic as a pesticide was allowed back then.

Fast forward and they're using the same fields to grow rice, and the metals are still in the soil...

I'll try and dig up some sources when I'm not mobile.

Re: US rice imports 'contain harmful levels of lead'

#17

Post by anigbrowl »

MichaelSalib wrote: post #9
gnosis wrote: post #2

"If you look through the scientific literature, especially on India and China, they irrigate their crops with raw sewage effluent and untreated industrial effluent," he explained." ... "Dr Tongesayi also said that the increasing practice of sending electronic waste to developing countries - and the pollution it leads to - exacerbates the problem." This is seriously scary! I had no idea that the delicious Indian and P…

What happened to the FDA's mission to protect the consumer? Why aren't rice imports tested for heavy metals? You know why. Because that would be onerous government regulation. Americans are obsessed with the idea that the government overregulates everything. That's why Congress is unwilling to fund enforcement actions.

I can't upvote this hard enough.

Re: US rice imports 'contain harmful levels of lead'

#18

Post by rdouble »

nicksergeant wrote: post #16
rdouble wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you just buy rice grown in the USA?

No, even US-grown rice suffers the same problem (not as the article, though). Basically rice in the southern US is grown in fields that used to be used for cotton, and the use of arsenic as a pesticide was allowed back then. Fast forward and they're using the same fields to grow rice, and the metals are still in the soil... I'll try and dig up some sources when I'm not mobile.

I found some sources on my own. Interesting. It looks like California rice is the safest, and white rice is better than brown.

Re: US rice imports 'contain harmful levels of lead'

#19

Post by hkmurakami »

jcr wrote: post #5
gnosis wrote: post #2

"If you look through the scientific literature, especially on India and China, they irrigate their crops with raw sewage effluent and untreated industrial effluent," he explained." ... "Dr Tongesayi also said that the increasing practice of sending electronic waste to developing countries - and the pollution it leads to - exacerbates the problem." This is seriously scary! I had no idea that the delicious Indian and P…

> What happened to the FDA's mission to protect the consumer? The formal name is "Regulatory Capture" [1] but the common name is simply corruption. The interesting thing the article fails to mention is most of the countries which the US imports rice from actually ban rice imports from the US. The US, specifically California central valley, had and mostly still has a huge rice industry, but since so many countries ban…

>The countries which ban rice imports from the US are typically trying to protect their own rice farmers.

Japan's extremely inefficient agriculture sector (a model of corruption and government handouts, actually) is probably one of the most prominent offenders. (Their rice protectionism is both inefficient and corrupt)

Re: US rice imports 'contain harmful levels of lead'

#20

Post by [deleted] »

uvdiv wrote: post #12

Here's an abstract from the researcher, Tsanangurayi Tongesayi. Not this exact presentation, but apparently the same research: Lead was present in all the foods samples and its concentration ranged from 4.3 to 17.9 µg/g. Some baby rice food had levels of Pb as high as 12.5±0.2 µg/g. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:d4lyxhr... (Google Cache because of the intellectual property circus). The FDA's re…

[deleted]
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