Consumer Reports is urging U.S. limits for arsenic in rice after tests of more than 60 popular products from Kellogg's Rice Krispies to Gerber infant cereal showed most contained some level of inorganic arsenic, a known human carcinogen.
The watchdog group said some varieties of brown rice, including brands sold by Whole Foods Markets and Walmart contained particularly significant levels of inorganic arsenic.
It recommended ways for children and adults to limit their intake of rice products each week and said U.S. regulators should ban arsenic-containing drugs and pesticides used in crop and animal production. "The goal of our report is to inform not alarm consumers about the importance of reducing arsenic exposure," said Urvashi Rangan, director of safety and sustainability at Consumer Reports. "The silver lining in all of this is that it is possible to get a better handle on this."
In the absence of government regulation, steps that consumers can take include limiting infant rice cereal to one serving per day for babies and excluding rice milk from the daily diets of children under the age of five, the report said. Adults should eat no more than two servings of rice per week. As replacements, it suggested other healthy whole grains such as wheat, corn and oats, which have lower arsenic levels.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said plans to collect data on 1,200 food samples by the end of the year and make its own recommendation on arsenic intake. The agency said its preliminary data on arsenic in rice products is consistent with the Consumer Reports investigation. It found average levels of inorganic arsenic for various rice products of 3.5 to 6.7 micrograms per serving in about 200 samples.
