Currently browsing posts about: Arsenic

In the latest episode in the ongoing saga of high levels of arsenic in rice cereal marketed to babies, Beech-Nut says it is going out of the rice cereal business.

In addition to issuing the voluntary recall, Beech-Nut has also decided to exit the market for Beech-Nut branded Single Grain Rice Cereal. Beech-Nut is concerned about the ability to consistently obtain rice flour well-below the FDA guidance level and Beech-Nut specifications for naturally occurring inorganic arsenic.

Background: I have been posting about arsenic in rice since 2013.  In 2015, I wrote about how

• Rice cereals contain higher-than-desirable levels of arsenic.
• Arsenic gets into rice from natural sources but also from arsenic pesticides.
• The FDA says these levels do not pose health problems.
• Consumer Reports recommends not feeding rice cereals to children.
• The U.S. Rice Federation said the CR recommendation was not supported by science.

In August 2020, the FDA finally set guidelines for upper limits of arsenic in baby foods.  I wrote most recently—in May this year—about pressures on the FDA to set and enforce more rigorous standards and to go beyond its “Closer to Zero” plan to reduce heavy metals in baby foods.

Now the FDA announces the recall of Beech-Nut rice cereal with levels of arsenic that exceed those standards.

The Environmental Working Group asks if you should worry about arsenic in rice.  Its answer: Yes.

Rice, it points out, is a “specifically risky crop. Eating less rice and foods with rice-based ingredients will decrease the amount of arsenic in your body.”

EWG also recommends government actions:

• Crop monitoring programs
• Soil testing
• Elimination of use of sewage sludge as fertilizer (this practice is forbidden in organic foods)
• Clear communication of risks

At long last, pressures to fix this problem are having an effect.

Lawsuits also might help, as indicated by this item.

Heavy metals in baby food: 86 lawsuits and counting as Beech-Nut decides to exit infant rice cereal category owing to inorganic arsenic concerns:  At least 86 lawsuits have now been filed against firms named in the recent Congressional Subcommittee report on heavy metals in baby food including Beech-Nut Nutrition, which has just announced plans to exit the infant rice cereal category citing difficulties in sourcing rice flour that is consistently below FDA guidance levels for inorganic arsenic…. Read more

Is arsenic in rice something you should be worried about?

I never know what to say about food contaminants consumed in tiny amounts, in this case, micrograms (millionths of grams) per serving.

The FDA devotes a web page to arsenic in rice.  Here, the agency releases the results of its testing, which found amounts of arsenic mostly below 6 micrograms per serving.

Higher levels—11 micrograms per serving—were found in three samples from Texas, Louisiana and California.  The highest was 30 micrograms per serving of hot ready-to-eat rice bran cereal.

Is this good, bad, or indifferent?  And how would we know?

The FDA says such levels are too low to cause concern about short-term health problems.

But Consumers Union thinks the real issue is the long-term effects.

Today’s widely-reported message on arsenic levels in rice misses the point.  The issue is not the short-term risks of rice consumption. The concern is the long-term effects from exposure to arsenic in rice. As Consumer Reports has said in the past, consumers should not ignore the potential risks from consuming rice and rice products over a long period of time…Consumers are not well-served if they do not have the full story. The concerns about long-term effects are significant and warrant the FDA’s decision to investigate further.

The FDA says it plans further investigations.  In the meantime, it says you should:

• Eat a well-balanced diet.
• Vary your grains.
• Consider diversifying infant foods

This is always good advice.

But Consumers Union  is more specific.  It suggests you worry a little and observe these limits:

At the moment, this is the best information available.  FDA: get to work!

FDA references:

• FDA Statement on Testing and Analysis of Arsenic in Rice and Rice Products 
• Consumer Update: FDA Explores Impact of Arsenic in Rice
• Updated Questions & Answers: Arsenic in Rice and Rice Products

Perhaps in response to Consumer Reports’ charges that levels of arsenic in children’s juices are so high that more restrictive standards would be healthier (see previous post), the FDA has done its own tests, updated its arsenic home page, and strengthened its Q and A on arsenic.

The Q and A includes these questions:

Is the arsenic in apple juice predominantly organic or inorganic?  Due to limited data available to answer this question, in October 2011, FDA collected and analyzed 94 samples of apple juices available for sale in the United States. Results from this data indicate that there are relatively low levels of arsenic in apple juice, with 95 percent of the apple juice samples tested being below 10 ppb total arsenic, but that the arsenic in these samples was predominantly the inorganic form [the bad kind].

Did the FDA test any of the samples tested by the Dr. Oz Show? On September 10-11, 2011, the FDA completed laboratory analysis of the same lot of Gerber apple juice that was tested by the Dr. Oz Show [Dr. Oz complained about the dangers of arsenic in juice], as well as several other lots produced in the same facility. The FDA’s testing detected very low levels of total arsenic in all samples tested. These new results were consistent with the FDA’s results obtained in the FDA’s routine monitoring program and are well below the results reported by the Dr. Oz Show. The FDA has concluded that the very low levels detected during our analysis are not a public health risk and the juice products are safe for consumption.

Food Quality News reports that safe or not, the FDA is still “considering setting a guidance level for inorganic arsenic in apple juice and apple juice concentrate that will further minimise public exposure to this contaminant.”

As well it should.  And preferably at the lower levels recommended by Consumer Reports.

I don’t often write about pesticides, plasticizers, heavy metals or other such potentially toxic substances in food because there usually isn’t enough science available to draw firm conclusions about how much of them is OK to consume.

At high concentrations they are demonstrably toxic.  But in food and water, they appear in amounts measured as parts per billion (ppb) or trillion, and it is difficult to know how harmful they may be at such levels.

The big question: is there a threshold for harm or are they unsafe at any level of intake?  The history of regulation of such substances is one of constant reduction in levels considered safe.

They derive in large part from industrial processes, and attempting to regulate them confronts large and powerful industries eager to argue that low levels are safe.

Now Consumer Reports has tested samples of juice and finds levels of arsenic  higher than allowed in drinking water:

• 10% of the samples contained levels of arsenic that exceed EPA drinking-water standards of 10 ppb.
• 25% contained levels of lead greater than the FDA’s 5 ppb standard for bottled water.
• Most arsenic was inorganic, a form linked to cancer, cardiovascular disease, immune disorders, and type 2 diabetes.
• 35% of children age 5 and younger drink juice in amounts higher than recommended by pediatricians.
• No federal standards exist for amounts of lead and arsenic in juice.

This is a food systems issue.  Inorganic arsenic gets into food from soil contaminated with arsenic-containing herbicides and waste from animals and chickens fed arsenic-containing additives.

Consumer Reports says:

• FDA should set a standard for total arsenic in juice at 3 ppb and 5 ppb for lead.
• EPA should lower the 10 ppb drinking-water limit for arsenic.
• Parents should limit juice servings to small children.

What does the FDA have to say?

The Food and Drug Administration has every confidence in the safety of apple juice…small amounts of arsenic can be found in certain food and beverage products—including fruit juices and juice concentrates….there is no evidence of any public health risk from drinking these juices…FDA has been testing them for years [see the FDA’s Q and A].

As if this were not enough to worry about, Food Quality News reports increasing concern about the amount of arsenic in rice, the dangers of such levels for pregnant women, and the need to establish better standards for safe levels of arsenic in foods.

Consumer Reports is especially concerned about a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences linking rice consumption to levels of arsenic in the urine of pregnant women.   It notes that children in the U.S. typically are fed rice cereal as their first solid food, making them especially vulnerable to the effects of arsenic.

Arsenic gets into rice in the same way that it gets into apples and grapes, but rice is especially efficient in taking up arsenic from soil.

I see all this as further evidence that agricultural practices are key determinants of public health and that we badly need:

• More and better research on the effects of small amounts of arsenic, lead, pesticides, and other such toxins in food
• Research on how to remove such toxins from soil
• Federal safety standards for arsenic in foods and beverages; the Consumer Reports recommendations make sense
• Regulations that restrict use of arsenic drugs in animal agriculture and of pesticides containing arsenic
• Restrictions on the amount of juice and rice given to children

It’s great that Consumer Reports is doing this kind of research but federal agencies should be doing a lot more of it too.

For years, as Tom Philpott recounts on his new food and agriculture blog for Mother Jones, public health advocates have fretted about the use of arsenic-containing drugs to kill intestinal parasites and promote growth in chickens.

One such drug is roxarsone, made by Pfizer. Its arsenic is in the organic (carbon-containing) form, which is less toxic than the inorganic form.

But, as the New York Times explained, evidence has been accumulating that the organic form can change into the more toxic, inorganic form, a known carcinogen.

As reported in Food Safety News,  the Center for Food Safety, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, and several other consumer and agriculture groups petitioned FDA to ban the drug three years ago.

Last week, the FDA announced that the agency had done its own feeding tests.  Chickens fed organic roxarsone had higher levels of inorganic arsenic in their tissues.  The FDA got Pfizer to “voluntarily” withdraw the drug from the market.

The surprise here is not the FDA’s delay in dealing with this drug.  The big surprise is that the FDA did its own testing.  As the Times put it:

The F.D.A. once routinely conducted its own studies of animal and human drugs, but limited budgets led the agency to eliminate much of its scientific and laboratory capacity over the years. The roxarsone study is a triumph for agency scientists but one unlikely to be repeated very often. The agency asked for $183 million in additional funds for food safety efforts next year, but House Republicans have instead proposed cutting $87 million.

Drug companies cannot be expected to do their own testing if there is any chance that the tests will show something not in their best interest.  If independent federal agencies don’t do these kinds of studies, who will?

I can remember when the FDA housed a group of researchers doing outstanding work on food allergies in the 1990s.  The FDA closed down that lab when it was given additional responsibilities by Congress with no additional funding.

The FDA is a public health agency.  Its job is to protect the public against unsafe food contaminated with bacteria or antibiotics such as roxarsone.  The agency gets high marks for taking this on.  And Congress needs to support the FDA’s research mission.