Arsenic in Brown Rice

[summerm592]

I've recently heard that there are high level of arsenic in brown rice, even organic. I read a few articles on the internet on the subject, trying to determine if there was a specific area where the arsenic rice was being grown, but all the information was inconclusive.Some studies said to avoid rice grown in the southern states and in California.But, I had heard before that rice in California is the best.
Please if anyone has any information, I would really appreciate it.

[jodi f.]

If you do a search on this forum, you'll come up with other discussions on the topic. What I've recently read is that the arsenic occurs naturally and is also coming from releases from industry that pollute the air and water. Rice appears to be particularly adept at picking it up out of the environment. Whether this is due to some innate quality of rice, or because growing it is so water-intensive, I don't know. I believe that it's brown rice syrup, which is a highly concentrated product, that is of primary concern, and not simply eating rice. However, there will be people who are more susceptible than others, so getting as much information as possible is important.

Lundberg Family Farms issued a press release on the topic earlier this year. You can access it here, though it's not super informative: http://www.lundberg.com/Info/news_home.aspx

And here's a short NPR interview that clarifies the issue a bit: http://www.npr.org/2012/03/02/147781035/high-levels-of-arsenic-found-in-rice