Plant Milks, Rice-Based
This page is HMTc Category 5 row 7. It now has a usable regulatory-versus-field-finding comparison for inorganic arsenic in finished rice-based drinks.
Heavy Metal Index pages are written for several audiences at once. Each entry point below names where to start if you are reading this page with a specific question in mind.
- Brand legal and regulatory affairs
- Cherry-pick attack vectors on rice-based plant milks typically center on inorganic arsenic from the rice base; the EU iAs cap on rice-based drinks (30 ppb for non-alcoholic rice-based drinks per EU 2023/915) is the public number. Source provenance and the iAs-vs-tAs speciation rule from the Methodology section are the defensive core. Compare with Plant Milks Non Soy Non Rice for the within-pair sibling. The cited sources at the bottom of this page are the citations list, written to be quoted into a Daubert brief without further editing.
- Retailer quality and compliance
- The Federal / Regulatory Limits vs Field Findings section compares the applicable regulatory cap to cited field evidence on a like-for-like basis, with basis conversion shown when conversion is well-defined and a methodology anchor when speciation differs. The Literature Evidence Summary gives source count and confidence rating per analyte.
- Brand QA and product development
- Use the Lab Result Comparator to position a single lab value inside the cited literature. The comparator positions a single lab value inside the cited literature for rice-based plant milks, against the EU 2023/915 30 ppb iAs cap on rice-based drinks.
- Regulators, journalists, and adversarial readers
- Every numeric claim on this page traces to a source page. The Evidence Governance note explains what this page is and is not (literature evidence, not HMT&C certification thresholds).
- HMT&C staff (internal)
- The threshold-selection arithmetic (percentile statistics, clean / dirty subcategory designation, CC eligibility) lives on the staff workbench snapshot at plant-milks-rice-based, not on this public page.
| Field | Status |
|---|---|
| Row state | Species-specific occurrence and regulatory comparison available for iAs |
| Best current source | damato2026-inorganic-arsenic-rice-based-beverages |
| Applicable regulation | eu2023-arsenic-rice-based-drinks |
| Computation readiness | Data-grounded for EU iAs comparison; Cd and Pb remain evidence gaps |
| Ingredient routing | plant-milk, rice |
| HMTc use | Strong evidence for iAs prioritization; not an HMTc threshold |
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.
| Metal | Federal / regulatory limit | Actual field finding | Decision read | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| arsenic-inorganic (iAs) | eu2023-arsenic-rice-based-drinks: EU European Commission maximum level: 30 ug/kg iAs. Scope: non-alcoholic rice-based drinks. Basis: wet weight. | D’Amato 2026 reports 25 Italian rice-based beverages with iAs from 7 to 24 ug/kg; no sample exceeded 30 ug/kg. | Direct comparison available; matrix, analyte species, and unit basis match. Not an HMTc certification limit. | eu2023-arsenic-rice-based-drinks; damato2026-inorganic-arsenic-rice-based-beverages |
| arsenic-total (tAs) | No federal product-specific limit loaded in this crosswalk. | D’Amato 2026 reports total arsenic from 9 to 58 ug/kg in rice-based beverages; total arsenic is context only and is not interchangeable with inorganic arsenic. | Occurrence evidence only. Do not infer a federal exceedance or HMTc pass/fail result from this row. | damato2026-inorganic-arsenic-rice-based-beverages |
Occurrence Evidence
damato2026-inorganic-arsenic-rice-based-beverages 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; pooling, percentile selection, and threshold math sit in the staff Standards Workbench rather than this public page.
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.
| Analyte | Subcategory | Reported concentration range | Detection rate | Applicable regulatory cap | Sources | Confidence | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| iAs | rice-based (no contributing evidence loaded) | No concentration data loaded for this analyte | Sample-level detection rate not reported | eu2023-arsenic-rice-based-drinks: 30 ppb (wet weight) | 0 | data gap | Basis not reported |
| Cd | rice-based (no contributing evidence loaded) | No concentration data loaded for this analyte | Sample-level detection rate not reported | No applicable cap loaded | 0 | data gap | Basis not reported |
| Pb | rice-based (no contributing evidence loaded) | No concentration data loaded for this analyte | Sample-level detection rate not reported | No applicable cap loaded | 0 | data gap | Basis not reported |
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]*.
| # | Citation | Year | Type | Used on this page for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | D’Amato et al. 2026. Inorganic Arsenic in Rice-Based Beverages: Occurrence in Products Available on the Italian Market and Dietary Exposure Assessment, Foods | 2026 | Peer-reviewed | HPLC-ICP-MS speciation of iAs in 25 Italian-market rice-based beverages (mean iAs 15 µg/kg); primary direct iAs occurrence source for the rice-based plant-milk row with EU regulatory comparison |
| 2 | Marques et al. 2021. Essential and Non-essential Trace Elements in Milks and Plant-Based Drinks, Biological Trace Element Research | 2021 | Peer-reviewed | ICP-MS survey of Pb, tHg, Ni, and U in retail plant-based drinks from Spain including rice drink; tHg not detected; provides multi-metal occurrence context for the rice-based plant-milk row |
| 3 | Gu et al. 2020. Arsenic Concentrations and Dietary Exposure in Rice-Based Infant Food in Australia, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 17(2):415 | 2020 | Peer-reviewed | ICP-MS tAs and iAs measurement in 3 Australian rice milk powder samples (mean tAs 428 ppb; mean iAs 160 ppb); triangulation source confirming elevated iAs in rice-based beverages in a non-EU market |
| 4 | C-C et al. 2016. Methylmercury varies more than one order of magnitude in commercial European rice, Food Chemistry | 2016 | Peer-reviewed | SPE-HPLC-CV-AFS MeHg speciation in 87 commercial European rice products (MeHg range 0.11–6.45 µg/kg; mean 1.91 µg/kg); provides MeHg ingredient cascade for the rice-based plant-milk row via rice-commodity linkage |
CC candidate evidence map
| Analyte | Distribution sources (sample-level) | Summary sources | Total source count |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pb | — | Marques 2021 (n=42 plant-drinks; rice-drink subset count pending) | 1 summary |
| Cd | — | — | 0 |
| tAs | — | Da Mato 2026 (n=25 summary), Gu 2020 (n=3 triangulation) | 2 summary |
| iAs | — | Da Mato 2026 (n=25 summary), Gu 2020 (n=3 triangulation) | 2 summary + EU cap |
| MeHg | — | Brombach 2017 ingredient cascade | 1 cascade |
| tHg | — | Marques 2021 (not-detected) | 1 summary |
| Ni | — | Marques 2021 | 1 summary |
| Al, Cr-VI, Sn | — | — | 0 |