Signes-Pastor 2016 - Inorganic Arsenic In Rice-Based Products For Infants And Young Children
Summary
This A-tier peer-reviewed occurrence paper directly reports inorganic arsenic (iAs, reported as Asi) in rice-based products marketed for infants and young children. It is the primary source behind the later Signes-Pastor 2018 weaning-exposure citation for baby rice, rice cereals, and rice crackers.
The paper supports species-specific occurrence context for baby-cereals-dry-rice-based and teething-and-snacks-rice-based. It does not support aggregate HMTc threshold values because the routeable tables report medians and ranges rather than sample-level values that can be admitted one by one into the benchmark pool.
Key Numbers
All values below are source-reported inorganic arsenic concentrations from Table 3, converted from mg/kg dry weight to ppb by multiplying by 1000.
| Product group | Market/source | N | Source-reported iAs median | Source-reported range | HMI route |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baby rice | US FDA survey | 85 | 114 ppb | 39-254 ppb | baby-cereals-dry-rice-based |
| Baby rice | EU present study | 29 | 121 ppb | 56-268 ppb | baby-cereals-dry-rice-based |
| Rice cereals | US FDA survey | 105 | 91 ppb | 23-283 ppb | baby-cereals-dry-rice-based |
| Rice cereals | EU present study | 53 | 75 ppb | 8-323 ppb | baby-cereals-dry-rice-based |
| Rice crackers | US FDA survey | 199 | 79 ppb | 8-273 ppb | teething-and-snacks-rice-based |
| Rice crackers | EU present study | 97 | 111 ppb | 18-211 ppb | teething-and-snacks-rice-based |
Evidence Fitness
These rows are EF-3 summary evidence. They are species-specific and product-relevant, but they are not distribution-capable HMTc p90 evidence because Table 3 does not provide source-stated p90 or p95 values. The source includes a figure whose whiskers represent 10th and 90th percentiles, but numeric p90 values are not transcribed from the figure.
Routing Notes
- baby-cereals-dry-rice-based: direct species-specific context for infant rice cereal and baby rice rows.
- teething-and-snacks-rice-based: direct species-specific context for rice crackers used as young-child rice snacks.
baby-cereals-dry-non-rice: not routed. The source is rice-based and must not be used to fill non-rice cereal iAs gaps.
Limitations
- Basis is source-reported dry weight. Do not silently mix with wet, prepared, or reconstituted bases.
- The source reports iAs medians and ranges for product groups; no benchmark percentile or aggregate HMTc percentile is inferred from summary statistics.
- The source includes total arsenic for US FDA survey rows, but this ingest routes only inorganic arsenic.