Arsenic in Rice: Part 1 - We Meet Again

Bam!  Bam!  Bam!  Bam! Bam!  That's me banging my head on my desk after one of my fellow CHMMs sent me a link to this:

"Elevated Levels of Arsenic Found in rice Products."  Sept 19: "A new study from Consumer Reports found an increased amount of arsenic in some of the most popular brands of rice products.  TODAY's national investigative correspondent Jeff Rossen reports." (MSNBC)

Bam!  Bam!  Bam!  Bam! Bam! That's me beating this dead horse one more time.

Do you know what I did last week?  I presented my paper "Apple Juice, Arsenic, and Risk" at the 2012 AHMP Conference in Anchorage Alaska.  My paper was on Dr. Oz and Consumer Reports findings regarding arsenic detected in apple juice.  I wrote kind of extensively - ad nauseum some might argue - on this topic in bunch of previous posts.

So what new insight can I add to this new enlightenment coming from Consumer Reports?  At this point in time, I have not dived into it too deeply.  I do know that they have determined the range of inorganic arsenic in rice and published that range indicating, in red, where the concentration of arsenic exceeded the New Jersey standard for arsenic in drinking water.

Bam!  Bam!  Bam!  Bam! Bam!  If I have said it once, I will say it a million more times (see photo of Lego storm troopers beating a dead horse above to illustrate my point).  Do not - I repeat - DO NOT compare a value found in one thing with a regulatory limit set for another thing.  To pardon the pun, compare apple juice with apple juice, not apple juice with drinking water (read my previous posts if you want to know why).

Dear Consumer Reports; Stop.  Please stop reporting on what you find without having a full and complete understanding of what the numbers mean.  The experts you are consulting, with their highfalutin degrees and university connections are not giving you the full monty.  I am unsure as to what makes highly educated scientists lose sight of how their numbers stack up against reality.  You see, in assigning risk to an exposure, we are only as good as the data we can gather and the certainty we have in how accurate that data reflects our reality.  If the glove don't fit, you must acquit!

Which brings us to this:  Does the amount of arsenic that Consumer Reports found in the rice that they found reflect a risk of a health harm, in this case cancer, for those that consume it?

At this point in time, I don't know.  I remain skeptical of the findings because of how Consumer Reports looked at apple juice.  I am also skeptical because they lowered the threshold to the number New Jersey uses for arsenic in drinking water instead of the MCL that they compared apple juice to.  Why?  I suspect it was to get more red numbers in their table (red means it exceeded the threshold).  But that's speculation on my part.  Consumer Reports would not stoop that low, would they?

Next Post: Arsenic in Rice:  Part 2 - Let's Agree to This...


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