Overview
Swiss federal food safety scientists measured total arsenic by ICP-MS and arsenic species by IC-ICP-MS in 105 retail rice and rice-based products, including dry and ready-to-eat baby foods, rice cereals (flakes and crispies), rice crackers, milk rice and rice drinks. Arsenic rose with rice content, with the highest levels in rice cereals and rice crackers, and arsenite (As(III)) was the main species. Toddler exposure was then estimated from German consumption data.
Key numbers
- Rice cereals (flakes and crispies, n = 7): inorganic arsenic (iAs) mean 204, range 45.9-331 µg/kg; total arsenic mean 278, max 630 µg/kg (Table 1).
- Rice crackers (n = 25): iAs mean 134, range 40.0-279 µg/kg (Table 1).
- Dry baby foods with rice (n = 12): iAs mean 67.5, range 9.5-119 µg/kg (Table 1).
- Ready-to-eat baby foods (n = 9): iAs mean 8.6 µg/kg (Table 1).
Methods (brief)
Total arsenic by sector-field ICP-MS after high-pressure nitric acid digestion (LOD 3.44, LOQ 10.3 µg/kg). Species by IC-ICP-MS after dilute nitric acid extraction at 90 °C, with LODs of 0.29 to 0.81 µg/kg. NIST 1568b rice flour recovered 283.7 against 285 µg/kg certified; species spike recoveries were 100 to 117%.
Evidence Fitness
Strong analytical QA and a defined sampling window, but only group statistics are printed, and some groups are small. Rice cereals (flakes and crispies, including one rice pops sample) are direct evidence for rice puffs. The dry baby foods are rice-containing infant cereals, so for cereal-based-infant-formula and infant-oat-cereal this is only a proxy (no formula or oat product was analyzed) and those pages are not linked. In Table 2 the values given as iAs for this study are actually the total arsenic means.