Arsenic Levels in Rice Pose No Immediate Threat to Health, FDA Says

The US Food and Drug Administration said Friday that levels of arsenic found in rice and rice products are too low to cause any immediate or short-term negative health effects.

The announcement comes after the FDA analyzed more than 1,300 samples of rice and rice products, finding that levels of organic arsenic and the more hazardous inorganic arsenic are too low to pose an immediate threat to consumer health.

Future FDA studies will assess the long-term health impacts of arsenic and rice consumption.

Arsenic is a naturally occurring element common in soil and water, but human activities such as burning fuel, mining and the use of arsenic in pesticides increase its presence in the environment. But even if all human contributions to arsenic in the environment were stopped, the compound would still appear in food, especially in rice, which is grown in water.

"One of the things we need to emphasize is that arsenic is a naturally occurring contaminant, and because it's in soil and water, it's going to get into food," said Suzanne Fitzpatrick, the senior advisor for toxicology in FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. "It's not something that we can just pull off the market," she said, adding that because rice is grown in water higher levels of arsenic will appear in the grain than in other foods.

Fitzpatrick said the next steps in the arsenic study will include the analyzing long-term exposure levels and assessing how to minimize risk, particularly to the most vulnerable groups such as pregnant women and children.

The future research will also assess whether certain segments of the population, such as ethnic groups who traditionally eat a lot of rice, are more vulnerable because of their lifestyle.

The FDA study is a response to a 2012 Consumer Reports study which asked the FDA to establish safety limits for arsenic in rice products after it found arsenic levels to be high across a range of rice products. Among the study's findings were that white rice grown in Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and Missouri -- which accounts for more than three-quarters of domestic rice in the US -- had much higher levels of inorganic arsenic and total arsenic (the combined amount of organic and inorganic arsenic) than in rice grown elsewhere and that arsenic levels are typically always higher in samples of brown rice versus white.