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Comment by huytersd | Hacker News Reader

Rice is going to have higher concentrations of arsenic no matter what. Indian rice has the lowest. It’s very high in Bangladesh so I would never buy rice from there. Chinese rice is also very high in arsenic. The US, Italy and Spain are particularly bad as well. If you buy rice make sure it’s Indian or Pakistani. Japanese rice also has lower levels of arsenic, comparable to India and Pakistan.

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What about the second largest rice exporter, Thailand? This is what I found:

> In comparison, the American rice accumulated the highest arsenic concentration (mean 0.257 mg kg−1) followed by the Thai rice (mean 0.200 mg kg−1), the Pakistani rice (mean 0.147 mg kg−1), the Indian rice (mean 0.103 mg kg−1), and finally the Egyptian rice (mean 0.097 mg kg−1).

So the lowest is Egyptian rice?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187853521...).

Egypt doesn’t really export a significant amount of rice (77th rice exporter in the world, <0.02% of Indian output) so its inclusion is irrelevant here since you will never find it in stores. Its arsenic level is basically the same as Indian rice.

How about Australian rice, like the Sunbrown brand?

Arsenic levels (mg/kg) in raw rice from different countries

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Arsenic-levels-mg-kg-in-...

What are you basing this on? Is there a place where measurements are catalogued?

They're mostly right.

> White basmati rice from California, India, and Pakistan, and sushi rice from the U.S. on average has half of the inorganic-arsenic amount of most other types of rice.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2015/01/how-muc...

I was unfamiliar with this as well, but found these sources:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187853521... (ctrl-f American)

https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2015/01/how-muc...

Research I did when I had my child since we eat a lot of rice. The numbers are readily available, some are listed in this comment thread.

My understanding is that rice you buy in China, which is presumably Chinese, is generally good for arsenic since the authorities are really hot on it, given the amount they eat. I can't remember where I read this but it seems plausible.

That’s not true. Arsenic levels are geo bound so cracking down on it does nothing. It’s in the soil and the ground water.

This paper suggests it's not too bad: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03043...

Their acceptable safe amount is 200mg/kg which is considered very high in the rest of the world. It’s a 100% higher than the average amount of arsenic in Indian rice.

You're mixing up milligram and microgram. Their acceptable level is 0.2mg i.e 200 micrograms.

I did but the comment still holds.

"Yes, but". It's possible for large nations like USA and China to grow rice in heterogenous regions and meet domestic demand with rice grown in low-arsenic regions (California), and export rice grown in high-arsenic regions (Texas).

That said, few people trust China to provide good numbers/testing/pro-active enforcement for consumer safety. They are good about applying very tough penalties (including personal executions/death penalty for corporate officers) after quality issues reach a certain level of public outcry. But most issues involve slow poisoning, don't directly kill/maim anyone, and don't reach any level of public outcry, so they go unenforced.

Food safety regulation enforcement is notoriously lax in PRC. People will import baby formula from foreign countries because it's safer.

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