Arsenic in various foods: Cumulative data

Overview

Uneyama and colleagues collated arsenic measurements across many food categories, with data drawn from published papers, Japanese local-authority research databases, and food-safety surveillance reports. The review grouped the data into crops, milk/meat/egg, fish, algae, seafood, and others, then estimated inorganic-arsenic ratios for selected food groups. This is secondary cumulative evidence, not a primary market survey, and total arsenic and inorganic arsenic must remain separate.

Key numbers

The abstract reports about 2500 collected value columns. It states that seafood was the major arsenic source in the compiled food data and that the intake of inorganic arsenic seemed to be mostly from seafood, with smaller contributions from other food categories.

The Results section states that Tables I-VI record sample name, area, year, molecular species, method, sample number, original value, conversion to mg kg−1, reference, and notes. Figure 1 plots total arsenic food contents from the tables, and Figure 2 estimates inorganic arsenic by applying the mean ratios in Table VIII. The source notes that most foods are low in inorganic arsenic except the specific Hijiki group and some health-food products.

Selected rice entries from Table I include:

Selected seafood and fish-speciation entries from Table III include Japanese 1980s fish rows from Shiomi (1992): flatfish total arsenic 36 mg dry weight with inorganic arsenic 0; yellowtail total arsenic 5 with inorganic arsenic 0.17; horse mackerel total arsenic 25.6 with inorganic arsenic 0.06; mackerel total arsenic 5.4 with inorganic arsenic 0; saury total arsenic 5.5 with inorganic arsenic 0.22; and sardine total arsenic 17.3 with inorganic arsenic 0.28.

Selected algae entries from Table IV include:

Table VIII summarizes reported ratios of inorganic arsenic in total arsenic. The ratio ranges and mean percentages are: vegetable and cereal 70-100%, mean 84% (21 reported numbers); fish 0-50%, mean 4.2% (133 reported numbers); crustaceae/shellfish 0-12%, mean 2.2% (97 reported numbers); seaweed other than Hijiki 0-20%, mean 3.3% (40 reported numbers); and Hijiki including Sargassum 30-82%, mean 61% (15 reported numbers).

Table VII reports daily total arsenic intake from total-diet studies in µg. Examples include whole Japan 120-230 µg for 1981-1994, Okinawa prefecture 98-263 µg for 1991-2000, the UK 1999 total-diet value 50 µg with inorganic only 0.9-5, USA 1986-1991 38.6 µg, and Spain 2003 458 µg. The rendered page confirms the unit as µg; the extracted text layer dropped the Greek mu.

Table XIII for Okinawa, Japan market basket 2000 reports rice daily total arsenic intake 18.89 µg and estimated inorganic arsenic intake 15.87 µg, vegetables and seaweed daily total arsenic intake 30.87 µg and estimated inorganic arsenic intake 10.00 µg with uncertainty, seafood daily total arsenic intake 54.43 µg and estimated inorganic arsenic intake 2.72 µg with uncertainty, and total daily arsenic intake 110.01 µg with estimated daily inorganic arsenic intake 33.48 µg.

Methods (brief)

The authors searched PubMed in August 2006 using food, beverage, arsenic, and arsenicals terms, and also used Japanese local-authority research databases plus national food-safety surveillance reports. About 1000 papers or reports from 1977 onward were selected, and data were grouped into food-category tables. Values were converted to mg kg−1 where possible, and figures used reported ranges and means by importing minimum, maximum, and mean values when the source provided them. Inorganic-arsenic estimates used Table VIII ratios for food categories, while categories not represented in Table VIII were assigned a 100% multiplier in the source’s total-diet calculations.

Implications

This review is useful as a broad arsenic-routing source across rice, seafood, seaweed, and other food families, especially because it preserves examples where total arsenic and inorganic arsenic differ sharply. Hijiki and Sargassum are separated from other seaweeds by the authors because their inorganic-arsenic ratios are much higher. Downstream extraction should treat this as review-level evidence and should not silently pool its global, multi-decade, mixed-basis rows without row-fit, market, and basis adjudication.

Update history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and the full version history lives in git.