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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'

#21

Post by blinkingled »

rdouble wrote: post #18
nicksergeant wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Care to list your sources? Thanks!

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

#22

Post by rdouble »

blinkingled wrote: post #21
rdouble wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Care to list your sources? Thanks!

I just googled "rice arsenic" and read the first page of results.

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

#24

Post by InclinedPlane »

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.

The government does overregulate damned near everything. Even worse, it fails to regulate the right things. You can't buy Kinder Eggs in the US because of FDA regulations, and yet the FDA lets in literally tons of rice that is tainted with lead or arsenic.

Does that seem like a problem to you? It seems like a problem to me.

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

#25

Post by uvdiv »

harlox wrote: post #3

Is anything safe to eat anymore?

Yes, virtually everything. Out of about 10,000 samples of 731 different food products, the FDA found nothing within orders of magnitude of these lead levels.

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

pp. 69-80

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

#27

Post by astrodust »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #24
MichaelSalib wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The government does overregulate damned near everything. Even worse, it fails to regulate the right things. You can't buy Kinder Eggs in the US because of FDA regulations, and yet the FDA lets in literally tons of rice that is tainted with lead or arsenic. Does that seem like a problem to you? It seems like a problem to me.

Number of kids that've died from lead poisoned rice: Zero.

Number of kids that've died from eating a Kinder Surprise, Darwin's Law notwithstanding: At least one?

If you want to complain about regulation, you're really complaining about people who don't want to take personal responsibility for their own actions. Rather than not buy Kinder Surprise treats for infants, they'd rather ban them for everyone just in case.

Regulations, in many cases, just reflect collective attitudes.

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

#28

Post by grannyg00se »

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…

That is not an India and China problem. It is an industrial farming and industrial policy problem. From which the USA also suffers.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/help-ban-sludge/

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

#29

Post by PakG1 »

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…

In China, the Occam's razor explanation is that the lead is really there. China's population is freaked out by food safety because of all the food scandals that have happened over the years. Melamanine in milk, for which milk company executives were actually executed, reuse and reselling of cooking oil found in gutters, the list goes on and on and on.

I have no idea about the conditions in Taiwan, but in China, the Occam's razor explanation is unfortunately the negative option because it's proven to be so common. Recently for example, Hong Kong folks are super mad that mainland China folks are coming over and buying up all the milk powder for their babies. Why don't mainland China folks buy milk powder in mainland China? Well, there you go.

edit: for those who haven't read the article, the article states, "The researchers found the highest levels of lead in rice from China and Taiwan"

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