Arsenic, cadmium, and lead in rice and rice products on the Austrian market

ABSTRACT

Fifty-one rice samples, i.e. 25 rice varieties, 8 rice products, and 18 rice containing baby foods from the Austrian market were surveyed for arsenic, cadmium, and lead. Inorganic arsenic (iAs) is most toxic to human health, and its mean concentrations in rice were 120 µg kg⁻¹, 191 µg kg⁻¹ in rice products, and 77 µg kg⁻¹ in baby foods. The average dimethylarsinic acid and methylarsonic acid concentrations were 56 µg kg⁻¹ and 2 µg kg⁻¹, respectively. The highest iAs concentration was found in rice flakes (237 ± 15 µg kg⁻¹), close to the Maximum Level (ML) set by the EU regulation for husked rice (250 µg kg⁻¹). The levels of cadmium (12 to 182 µg kg⁻¹) and lead (6 to 30 µg kg⁻¹) in the majority of rice samples were below the European ML. Upland grown rice from Austria showed both, low inorganic arsenic (<19 µg kg⁻¹) and cadmium (<38 µg kg⁻¹) concentrations.

KEYWORDS:

• Rice
• baby foods
• inorganic arsenic
• arsenic speciation
• cadmium
• lead
• ICP-MS

Acknowledgments

This work was done as part of a research ERASMUS+EU internship at the University of Graz, Austria. The authors report there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/19393210.2023.2194061.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.