Overview
Bascunan and colleagues reviewed two decades of literature on arsenic, mercury, cadmium and lead in people with celiac disease or on gluten-free diets. They conclude that rice-based products are a relevant source of arsenic and other metals, and that people on gluten-free diets show higher blood or urinary arsenic and mercury than people on complete diets, though far below toxic levels. The paper is a review and contributes no new measurements.
Key numbers
- Quoted from a cited study: inorganic arsenic was 63 percent of total arsenic in the rice products tested, highest in whole and enriched white rice (Section 4, p. 6).
- Cites the US FDA action level of 100 ppb inorganic arsenic in infant rice cereal (Introduction, p. 2).
Methods (brief)
Narrative review of Medline and Scielo publications from the previous 20 years in English, French and Spanish on the four metals and gluten-free diets.
Evidence Fitness
Context only (tier C): all food values are quoted from other studies and are not extracted. Useful background on why rice-heavy diets raise arsenic exposure. It does not measure crisped rice cereal and is not linked to that page.