Analysis of commercially available rice imported into the US has revealed it contains levels of lead far higher than regulations suggest are safe.<\/p>\nSome samples exceeded the “provisional total tolerable intake” (PTTI) set by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by a factor of 120.<\/p>\n
The report at the American Chemical Society Meeting adds to the already well-known issue of arsenic in rice.<\/p>\n
The FDA told the BBC it would review the research.<\/p>\n
Lead is known to be harmful to many organs and the central nervous system.<\/p>\n
It is a particular risk for young children, who suffer significant developmental problems if exposed to elevated lead levels.<\/p>\n
Because rice is grown in heavily irrigated conditions, it is more susceptible than other staple crops to environmental pollutants in irrigation water.<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
Rice from China and Taiwan had the highest lead levels, but Dr Tongesayi stressed that all of the samples significantly exceeded the PTTIs.<\/p>\n
Dr Tongesayi has also worked on quantifying arsenic contamination – and is in effect working his way through the heavy metals one by one to determine their prevalence.<\/p>\n
The problem, he said, is the range of agricultural practices around the world.<\/p>\n
“If you look through the scientific literature, especially on India and China, they irrigate their crops with raw sewage effluent and untreated industrial effluent<\/strong>,” he explained.<\/p>\n“Research has been done in those countries, and concerns have been raised because of those practices, but it’s still ongoing.”<\/p>\n
Dr Tongesayi also said that the increasing practice of sending electronic waste to developing countries – and the pollution it leads to – exacerbates the problem.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Via: Natural News: But the authors themselves discovered worrisome discrepancies when they sent the samples to a third-party lab for verification. According to an email acquired by Natural News, the results from this third-party lab showed all sub-ppm levels of lead, not the much higher numbers the Tongesayi team had reported. Why the Tongesayi team […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,16,44,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collapse","category-environment","category-food","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}