Plant Milks, Rice-Based — RETIRED

Overview

Ingredient drivers

The inputs below are ordered by their share of the routed occurrence evidence for the metal each drives; the bar shows relative position within this category, not a comparison against any limit.

Limits applicable to this category

The category inherits the maximum levels and action levels that apply to it. These are regulatory limits, not certification thresholds.

Testing and verification posture

Occurrence values in this category are measured by ICP-MS in the source literature, the same method the FDA Toxic Elements Program uses for the survey data behind its action levels.

This subcategory has been re-routed to Category 3, currently in build. The standards page will be available when Category 3 is finalized.

HMTc Category 5 row 7 was retired under Category 5 Step 0 Amendment 1 (April 28, 2026), authority Step Zero Protocol v1.4 §0G operation 2. Rice-based plant milks (rice milk) are certified under Category 3 (Grains, Cereals, and Rice Products), row 10 (Rice beverages), so that the rice higher-contamination row is handled coherently within one category. This URL is preserved permanently and will resolve to the Category 3 row 10 standards page once Category 3 is locked.

The literature evidence below is retained for historical reference and will be re-routed to the Category 3 row 10 page when that page is built. No HMTc standards values are published from this page.

Historical literature evidence (Category 5 row 7, retired)

The content below was the original Category 5 row 7 literature synthesis. It is preserved verbatim for traceability under the locked-file-immutability principle. Standards inheritance moves to Category 3 row 10.

Methodology

This page reports what the peer-reviewed and regulatory literature states about heavy-metal concentrations in rice-based plant milks. HMT&C certification thresholds for products in this row are developed under the certification program at heavymetalcertified.com, not on this page.

Speciation is non-substitutable. Inorganic arsenic (iAs) and total arsenic (tAs) are separate analytes. Total mercury (tHg) and methylmercury (MeHg) are separate analytes. Total chromium (Cr) and hexavalent chromium (Cr-VI) are separate analytes. Values are never interchanged across speciation boundaries.

Basis is preserved and labeled. Concentration values are reported as the source states them (as consumed, as placed on market, dry weight). Conversion between bases is shown explicitly when performed; silent conversion is never done.

Row-fit follows author scope. A source’s matrix and format classification is determined by what the authors state, not by re-derivation. Vague author scope receives a partial row-fit designation; sources silent on matrix receive an unknown designation.

Non-detect handling preserves source convention. Sources that report non-detects as zero, as LOD/2, or as <LOD are recorded as stated. The convention is noted in the Source Evidence Inventory.

Source pooling is avoided across different LOQ thresholds, collection periods, geographies, and analytical-basis differences without explicit documentation of the pooling rationale.

Decision Snapshot

Federal / Regulatory Limits vs Field Findings

This is the fast comparison view for standards developers, regulators, retailers, brands, and legal teams. It shows the applicable federal or regulatory limit next to the current field-evidence state. It is not an HMTc pass/fail table; technical distributions remain in the evidence sections below.

Broad Product Context: Author-Scope Index

Broad-context source index will be auto-generated here when the routing audit identifies sources whose author-stated scope is broader than this product row.

Source Evidence Inventory

Sources contributing measured rice-based plant milk concentrations are listed below. Intake and exposure estimates are kept separate from measured product concentrations.

Occurrence Evidence

Inorganic Arsenic in Rice-Based Beverages: Occurrence in Products Available on the Italian Market and Dietary Exposure Assessment analyzed 25 Italian-market rice-based beverages collected from April 2022 to March 2023. The study used HPLC-ICP-MS speciation and reported no left-censored iAs values, which makes it unusually useful for comparison-layer work.

The same source reports consumer-only dietary exposure estimates that are important for risk prioritization: toddlers consuming rice drinks averaged 0.27 ug/kg bw/day with MOE 0.2, while other children averaged 0.13 ug/kg bw/day with MOE 0.5. These are exposure-risk context, not product-level compliance values.

Ingredient Handling

The iAs measurements are finished rice-based beverages. They should not be copied into Rice as ingredient-only values. The rice ingredient node can link to this source as related finished-product evidence.

Literature Evidence Summary

The table below summarizes what the peer-reviewed and government literature cited on this page reports for heavy-metal concentrations in rice-based product. Values are pulled directly from cited sources without re-aggregation. This page publishes literature evidence only, not certification thresholds.

Methodology rules for speciation, basis preservation, non-detect handling, and source pooling are stated in the Methodology section above and apply to every row below.

References

Works cited in this page’s text, in first-appearance order. See Sources for this page’s source inventory. Each title links to its source record, which carries the ingest receipt, the extracted values, and the file hash of the document it was built from.

1. Inorganic Arsenic in Rice-Based Beverages: Occurrence in Products Available on the Italian Market and Dietary Exposure AssessmentD’Amato M, Turco AC, D’Amore T, Vitale F, Marini F, Stacchini P, et al. · Foods · 2026 · doi.org/10.3390/foods15020383Peer-reviewed

Sources

Auto-generated from source-page frontmatter. The "Used on this page for" column is populated by the orchestrator's POPULATE-SOURCE-LEGEND action; pending entries appear as *[awaiting synthesis]*.

CC candidate evidence map

Levers to reduce contamination

The levers below are ordered by estimated impact magnitude for finished rice-based plant milks as a product category. Inorganic arsenic (iAs) is the primary metal of concern, with an applicable EU regulatory cap of 30 µg/kg (EU 2023/915). Magnitude claims are cited; uncited lever rows carry a placeholder noting that quantified evidence has not yet been ingested.

How standards math uses this page

This page reports what the peer-reviewed and government literature says about heavy-metal concentrations in this product category; it publishes no certification thresholds of its own. Certification criteria are set separately under the Heavy Metal Tested & Certified program at heavymetalcertified.com, which reads this page as its literature baseline. The two are kept apart by design, so this page remains an independent record of the evidence rather than a justification for any threshold.

Historical recalls and enforcement

No public recalls or enforcement actions specifically targeting heavy metals in rice-based plant milks are documented in the wiki’s source corpus as of the last review. The EU Commission maximum level for iAs in non-alcoholic rice-based drinks (30 µg/kg, established under Regulation EU 2023/915) represents the operative regulatory framework for this product class in the EU market. This section will be populated when specific enforcement events or market-surveillance actions are ingested.

Frame: if FDA, EU, or national-agency enforcement actions involving heavy metals in this product category are identified in future ingest, they will appear here as regulatory events. This section does not rank brands.

Update history

No substantive edit history is available in this build. The full commit record is available in git.