There’s arsenic in your rice —
and here’s how it got there
Photo by Shutterstock.
Rice. It’s just
one of the basics, right? Whether eaten on its own, or in products like pastas
or cereal, this inexpensive and healthy food is a staple for Asian and Latino
communities, as well as the growing number of people looking to avoid gluten.
Here’s the bad
news (cue Debbie Downer
sound effect): The food most of us think we have more or less locked down
is shockingly high in arsenic. And arsenic, especially the inorganic form often
found in rice, is a known carcinogen linked to several types of cancer, and
believed to interfere with fetal development.
According to new
research by the Consumers Union, which took over 200 samples of both
organic and conventionally grown rice and rice products, nearly all the samples
contained some level of arsenic, and a great deal of them contained enough to
cause alarm. While there is no federal standard for arsenic in food, according
to the Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, one
serving of rice may have as much inorganic arsenic as an entire day’s worth of
water. (They’ve also created a useful chart
of various rice products, rice brands, and their arsenic levels.)
Rice often readily absorbs arsenic from soil where
chemical-heavy cotton once grew. (Photo by Shutterstock.)
How does rice
compare to other grains like wheat and oats? It turns out it’s much higher
because of two main factors: How and where rice is grown. The
November issue of Consumer Reports, released today, breaks down both
phenomena. First, the how:
Rice absorbs
arsenic from soil or water much more effectively than most plants. That’s in
part because it is one of the only major crops grown in water-flooded
conditions, which allow arsenic to be more easily taken up by its roots and
stored in the grains.
Then, the
where:
In the U.S. as
of 2010, about 15 percent of rice acreage was in California, 49 percent in
Arkansas, and the remainder in Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Texas.
That south-central region of the country has a long history of producing
cotton, a crop that was heavily treated with arsenical pesticides for decades
in part to combat the boll weevil beetle.
Not a big rice
eater? Well, I’d argue this study matters for other reasons too; it illustrates
what a long shadow industrial farming practices can cast over the entire food
system — and the way some chemicals can cycle through our food and water, for
literally generations. You see, in some areas, even rice grown organically is impacted
because of what you might call the legacy of the soil.
For decades,
farmers used lead-arsenate insecticides to control pests. As the name implies,
these were extra dangerous because of their lead content and they were banned
in the 1980s, but much of the arsenic that was left behind still remains in the
soil. As Consumer Reports mentioned above, the worst offenders were
cotton farms in the South, which relied heavily on these heavy-metal-containing
chemicals. (Cotton farming, generally, is known to be some of the most “chemically dependent” farming
on Earth.)
Click to embiggen.
There are still
several non-lead-based arsenical pesticides on the market, and although most
are in the process of being phased out, Michael Hansen, Consumers Union senior
scientist, says there is still one important pesticide, called
MSMA, in use on cotton farms. Ironically, Hansen says, “they’re allowing
its use because of the increasing problem of Palmer pigweed — created by the
overuse of Glyphosate [Roundup] due to [Roundup Ready] GMO seeds.” (Otherwise
known as superweeds.) “Palmer pigweed can lead to a 25 percent-or-more loss
of revenue in cotton. So federal regulators calculated that it was worth the
risk to continue using arsenic herbicides.”
Arsenic has
also been commonly used in animal feed to prevent disease and make both hogs
and chickens grow faster. The manure from these farms also ultimately ends up
adding arsenic back in the soil (it’s even permitted on organic farms). Hansen
says he’s seen ample evidence that soils that have been treated with poultry
manure for years “have significantly higher levels of arsenic than untreated
soil.”
On the bright
side, a
new law in Maryland, a huge poultry farming state, will keep arsenic feed
out of chicken farms there. And one poultry drug, Pfizer’s
Roxarsone, was voluntarily withdrawn from the market last spring. Meanwhile
there are three others are still allowed to be used outside Maryland. “We think
the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] should ban those as well,” said Hansen.
In the press
release associated with the study, Consumers Union recommended that the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) phase out use of all arsenical pesticides
and the FDA set limits for arsenic in rice products. In response to Wednesday’s
report, the FDA released an FAQ
on its website describing its own testing of 1,000 different rice products.
FDA officials also told
the Washington Post, however, that they are “not prepared, based on
preliminary data, to advise people to change their eating patterns.”
The Consumers
Union, on the other hand, has a released a chart
explicitly designed to help consumers limit their exposure to rice, with
exact serving recommendations for both adults and children. Rice cereal, which
federal surveys indicate many small children eat multiple times a day, is of
special concern.
According to
Hansen, rice grown in California (a relatively small subset of the U.S.
industry), is also likely to have lower arsenic rates than rice grown in the
South. For those interested in reducing their risk, the scientist also
recommends washing the grain thoroughly before cooking it, and using a
technique Hansen has observed in Asia.
“When I was in
Bangladesh recently I noticed they would cook the rice with a lot of extra
water — to absorb arsenic and/or pesticide residue — and then drain it off at
the very end before serving it.” Hansen says this technique, over time,
especially if filtered water is used, may reduce the risk of exposure to the
heavy metal.
No comments:
Post a Comment