Findings and scope
This one-column item in the Environmental Health Perspectives “Science Selections” news section, written by a science journalist, summarises Jackson et al. (EHP 120(5):623 to 626) and reports no data of its own (PDF p.1). It relays that the researchers tested 3 commercially available brown rice syrups, 29 cereal bars (18 with organic brown rice syrup), 3 “energy shot blocks” with the syrup, 15 infant formulas without it and 2 toddler formulas with it, and that they measured inorganic arsenic, dimethylarsenate (DMA) and monomethylarsenate (MMA). According to the summary, the two toddler formulas sweetened with the syrup had about 20 times the total arsenic of the formulas without it, and inorganic arsenic made up most of the arsenic in two of the three syrups. The item closes with the study authors’ call for U.S. limits on arsenic in food, particularly infant and toddler formulas.
Key numbers
The item prints no absolute concentration for any product. Every figure below is secondhand and relative, as printed on PDF p.1; none was captured as a value, because converting a ratio to a concentration would be a back-calculation.
| Relayed finding | As printed |
|---|---|
| Toddler formulas with the syrup (one soy-based, one milk-based), total arsenic | about 20 times the formulas without the syrup |
| Prepared milk-based toddler formula, inorganic arsenic | just below the 10 µg/L EPA drinking-water standard |
| Prepared soy-based toddler formula, inorganic arsenic | 1.5 to 2.5 times above the EPA standard |
| Brown rice syrups, inorganic share of arsenic | 80 to 90% in two syrups; half in the third |
| Cereal bars | all 29 contained some arsenic; bars without rice-based ingredients had the lowest levels; “nearly 60% of the others” contained inorganic arsenic |
| Energy shot blocks | four servings equal, in inorganic arsenic, one litre of water at 10 µg/L; total arsenic twice that |
The measured concentrations belong to the primary study and are recorded on its source page.
Methods and Evidence Fitness
The item describes no sampling frame, analytical method, detection limit or quality control. It names the arsenic species measured and the product counts only.
Evidence Fitness is Context only. The item is useful as a pointer to the primary study and as a record of how that study’s findings were communicated. It cannot supply any routeable concentration, and its relative statements should not be converted to concentrations or used in place of the primary data.
Assessment limits
All figures are paraphrases of the primary study and may be rounded. The comparisons with the drinking-water standard apply to formula as prepared, at a dilution the item does not state. The phrase “nearly 60% of the others” is not further defined; it most plausibly refers to bars containing rice-based ingredients. The item states that the two toddler formulas were the only ones the researchers could find that contained the syrup; it does not identify brands.
Provenance notes
The PDF (one page, A204) was delivered in batch 02 of order HMI-GAP-INGEST-1 on 22 October 2026, filed under the manifest’s rice-starch folder. The SHA-256 matches the batch manifest. The printed title matches the manifest. The page does not print a DOI; the identifier 10.1289/ehp.120-a204a is taken from the manifest and the file name. The page also carries an unrelated Science Selection on landscape fire smoke, which was not ingested.
Related evidence
- Arsenic, Organic Foods, and Brown Rice Syrup
- Rice and grain syrups
- Grain-based snacks (crackers, biscuits, cookies, popcorn, pretzels) — non-rice clean counterpart to rice-snacks
- Rice
- Arsenic, Inorganic
- Arsenic, Total
Update history
22 October 2026: Ingested from the batch-02 PDF as a news summary. No values were added to the evidence register; the item prints only relative figures.
Update history
No substantive edit history is available in this build. The full commit record is available in git.