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U.S. rice exports to Haiti have unhealthy levels of arsenic, study finds
- ceejayoz 3y agoI’m a bit annoyed the article doesn’t even bother to touch on whether this is a concern domestically. Are we exporting the bad stuff? Or are we eating it too?
- EA-3167 3y agoIt is in fact a problem domestically as well, rice is a well-known bio-accumulator of arsenic. This is the reason for guidelines on how much rice pregnant women and children should eat.
- Buttons840 3y agoUgh, as someone with celiac disease, I don't have many starch choices. Don't take rice from me! The recent lead contamination in apple sauce made me glad we have the FDA, but also wonder if the FDA is doing enough. I've ran across some political conspiracy theories about doing away with the FDA and similar organizations, and I think I should appreciate the FDA while I can. But also, why did it take a bunch of kids getting lead poisoning for the FDA to find that apple sauce had a lead problem? Systematically testing products from the stores seems like a low hanging fruit, one of the simplest and most effective means of regulating the food supply. Is this not happening? What is the FDA doing that is more important than performing regular checks of the food in stores for contaminants? Maybe I'm a pessimist, but if rice commonly does have unsafe levels of arsenic, I'm not confident that anyone will say or do anything until it becomes a tragedy.
- b112 3y agoProbably fighting for the budget to do so. Certain political stances think that companies are the best people to curtail their own behavior. That inspections should never be done by the government. That no sane company would ever chase short term profit and stock price, over going bankrupt in 5 years, because they killed 1/2 their customers. So the FDA hasn't the budget to do random pulls I suspect. Of course, if you think of how many products are on grocery store shelves, pulling and testing 100k? 200k? products a week would be a budget indeed.
- no_wizard 3y agoThe bigger problem is we have a ton of regulatory overhead. The FDA and the USDA are both responsible for checking the safety of different parts of the food supply, and this causes issues. Instead of it being a clear priority for one agency it gets muddled in which agency should be looking at what. Then couple that with the fact that the FDA historically spends more time on drug safety than food safety and the USDA has conflicting priorities in many ways, combined together you end up with some real issues with catching things early and/or before they hit the market It could be solved by creating a single agency dedicated to food safety and removing the burden from two the agencies that have many other priorities on top of food safety. That in a tl;dr nutshell is the problem. There is a good overview of these dynamics done by Last Week Tonight that’s on YouTube I recommend for an overview: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Za45bT41sXg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Za45bT41sXg
- mh- 3y agoThis sounds a lot like the justification for creating the DHS to encompass the historically-disjoint agencies. I don't disagree with you, but I worry that the result would end up providing food safety theatre, à la TSA.
- arcticbull 3y agoI don’t think the theater resulted from the joining of the agencies but rather the change in mindset post 9/11 that led to the merger. Common root cause.
- bombcar 3y agoIf you’re truly worried about rice consumption levels, you likely can order specialty rice from known locations that has less arsenic
- somenameforme 3y agoYou're dramatically underestimating the amount of work that testing all foods would entail. It would be, at the minimum: every_single_type_of_food * every_production_point_of_said_food * every_manufacturing_point_of_said_food(e.g. restaurants) * every_test_to_run * frequency_to_test_at. That's a wildly exponential function. So the way the FDA (and most regulatory agencies in the US) works is by researching what they believe to be safe and then requiring companies agree to only use those methods/components. If a company does something else, they are required to provide evidence that they believe it is safe. The FDA then evaluates the provided evidence, rather than e.g. running labs/experiments/etc themselves. This drives numerous issues. For instance one is a 'generally recognized as safe' exception that allows companies to add entirely new components to their foods without even notifying the FDA. [1] Genetically engineered foods are another big one. A genetically engineered e.g. potato is, from the FDA's definitions, just a potato. And so it there's no further regulatory oversight or safety testing done whatsoever. The only thing they offer is a voluntary 'plant biotechnology consultation program.' [2] [1] - https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/04/14/399591292/why-the-fda-is-clueless-about-some-of-the-additives-in-our-food https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/04/14/399591292/wh... [2] - https://www.fda.gov/food/agricultural-biotechnology/how-gmos-are-regulated-united-states https://www.fda.gov/food/agricultural-biotechnology/how-gmos...
- reaperman 3y agoI think removing "every_manufacturing_point_of_said_food(e.g. restaurants)" would suffice, and be would perfectly appropriate. We literally already do this for all exported and imported food. So it's not absurd at all. Also I think your variable naming is a bit off. Restaurants aren't generally considered manufacturers.
- somenameforme 3y agoNo, they don't. What people think the FDA does and what it really does in general are extremely different. There's a very readable paper here [1] precisely on FDA handling of food imports - that is, if for some reason, you don't choose to believe random internet guy insisting everything most people think they know about a topic is wrong. I don't think it's very purposeful for me to just rephrase the paper when you can read it yourself and get all the details. But, if nothing else, I'll at least quote the lead sentence of the background section: --- "The FDA’s overall foods program is distinct in several respects from the agency’s other public health regulatory program areas. First—with the exception of food and color additive approvals and premarket notification for certain foods—foods under FDA jurisdiction, whether produced within or outside the United States, do not require premarket approval. Thus, the foods program overall is generally a postmarket program." --- The FDA does spot testing of high risk foods but otherwise relies primarily on corporations to simply promise that they're following the regulations that the FDA publishes. That's how you get things like lead in apple sauce - it's not something the FDA is going to be checking for. By contrast, they would likely test something like chicken, coming from a region that had a recent bird flu outbreak, for contamination. [1] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK220404/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK220404/
- jandrewrogers 3y agoThe other common arsenic bio-accumulator in our food is brassica oleracea i.e. broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and other cultivars of that plant.
- EA-3167 3y agoThat's why just to stay safe, I exclusively eat french fries and ham. Sure my doctor keeps talking about cholesterol and something about the pressure of my blood, but they're just in the pocket of big brassica! Kidding aside, I really think that a more... "European" for lack of a better word... attitude would do us a lot of good in the US when it comes to food. Our bottled water is full of plastic, our rice and brassica are loaded with heavy metals, and a lot of our food just sucks. Our dairy is sub-par unless you buy the very high end, our meat varies wildly, and you never quite know what you're getting.
- Sabinus 3y agoBut it might put up food prices! Apparently people need the choice to slowly poison themselves with food produced extremely cheaply.
- azinman2 3y agoFrom my experience I think there’s a lot more plastic water bottle consumption in Europe than the U.S.
- AniseAbyss 3y ago[dead]
- zwaps 3y agoDepends on country. In the north, no way.
- gnicholas 3y agoWe’re eating it too. Some brands are better than others. And brown rice is generally worse than white, since much of the arsenic is in the hull.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoWhat are the safe trace levels, assuming zero is impossible to achieve? I'm guessing our rice exports to Haiti are almost 100% white since brown rice is more of a domestic specialty crop (is it eaten much outside of the western developed world?).
- huytersd 3y agoRice 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.
- nullhole 3y agoWhat are you basing this on? Is there a place where measurements are catalogued?
- Gareth321 3y agoThey'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-much-arsenic-is-in-your-rice/index.htm https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2015/01/how-muc...
- mh- 3y agoI was unfamiliar with this as well, but found these sources: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187853521400032X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187853521... (ctrl-f American) https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2015/01/how-much-arsenic-is-in-your-rice/index.htm https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2015/01/how-muc...
- huytersd 3y agoResearch 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoWhat 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/S187853521400032X#:~:text=In%20comparison%2C%20the%20American%20rice,0.097%20mg%20kg%E2%88%921 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187853521...).
- rafram 3y agoOr in other countries. It makes total sense for the study to focus on analyzing samples in one market, but turning it into a news story without outside context is misleading - it seems like the story is about Haiti when it’s really about the US.
- jandrewrogers 3y agoIt mostly isn't a concern domestically. Americans don't eat nearly as much rice as Haitians, apparently. What constitutes a dangerous level of arsenic in the diet is controversial. First, arsenic is an essential micronutrient similar to selenium, and with a similar toxicity profile. There isn't much science to support the notion that the trace levels commonly found in food and water represent a health risk. Second, the recommended arsenic thresholds set by the government were the product of efforts by environmentalists to make opening new mines impractical by setting the standard below background environmental levels for many types of mining. This was sold under the theory that "arsenic is toxic at any dose" but per the first point, it clearly isn't. tl;dr: There was a lot of motivated reasoning and not much science behind the food and water arsenic recommended safe levels, and several regions of the planet are subject to significantly higher background levels with no ill effects. You definitely don't want to go out of your way to consume arsenic -- it is toxic at some dose -- but much of the discussion around the level of risk is misleading.
- laborcontract 3y agoWhat a gross generalization of what Americans eat. My family eats rice with almost every meal. Given that, is this a concern domestically? Is it a concern for my toddler?
- jandrewrogers 3y agoOf course it is a gross generalization, talking about the diet of any country usually is. While everyone is focused on rice, the other major bio-accumulator is brassica vegetables such as cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower. Many parts of Asia consume large quantities of both plants daily as staples, which suggests that the risk is low in practice.
- hollerith 3y agoYour Asia observation is relevant only if Asian levels of arsenic in the soil is comprable US levels, but I always thought levels in the soil in the southern US are an order of magnitude or 2 higher.
- fermentation 3y agoI can’t recall where but I read something about southern US rice (especially Texas) having high levels of arsenic. California rice was reported as safer
- supertrope 3y agoOn cotton fields lead arsenate was used as a pesticide to kill boll weevils. Some of that land now is rice fields. USA rice is marked Product of USA to differentiate from foreign crop. California grown is marked California to differentiate it from US south grown rice. https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/11/arsenic-in-your-food/index.htm#recommendations https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/11/arsenic...
- bell-cot 3y ago> The study also pointed to comparatively loose U.S. limits on concentrations arsenic and cadmium, which can leach from both human and naturally occurring sources to contaminate food and water. Rice is especially prone to absorb these metals. So Haiti has nothing whatever to do with the root problem. And the headline forgot to mention the added bonus of toxic cadmium in U.S. rice.
- jandrewrogers 3y agoThe paper itself largely ignores cadmium. While it was "higher" it was a low number and in many of their samples below the limits of detection.
- rafram 3y ago> "The flooding of U.S. rice into Haiti is not only economically violent for Haitian peyizan who struggle to sell their local product, but also violent toward the long-term health of Haitian consumers," the report said. I was really hoping that the academic writing trend where you call everything “violent” had died around 2021, but apparently it’s still with us!
- lo_zamoyski 3y agoIt is overused, for sure, and stylistically obtuse, but nitpicking when the meaning is clear ("destructive"). And it is true: NGOs and "aid" that indiscriminately flood a market with cheap products under the lazy and foolish belief that giving away free stuff is a Good Thing does incredible damage to economies. It's one thing to distribute aid during a crisis. It's another to keep shipping free stuff indefinitely. In this case, free rice is having the effect of price dumping. You can't compete with free, so local agriculture and cuisine is being wrecked, and diets are changing for the worse. Another example is the distribution of so-called mitumba, where, say, ragpickers from New Jersey ship tons of used and second hand clothing to Africa, destroying the local textile industry. This, and intentional Chinese tactics (and probably American, among others), is how, for example, Nigerian cotton and textiles were destroyed. If you want a country to flourish, often it's a matter of fucking off and letting it develop. Investment is good, of course, as long as it's done on the basis of a partnership between labor and capital, not taking over and pumping and dumping competition so you can effectively colonize the country economically. Unregulated free trade is always promoted by the powerful, as they can easily swoop into developing economies and entrench themselves before the local industrial base even has a chance to establish itself.
- nonethewiser 3y ago> but nitpicking when the meaning is clear ("destructive") But “destructive” and “violent “ aren’t synonymous. Its not nitpicking at all.
- lo_zamoyski 3y agoThen you are not familiar with the historical range of uses of the term, because it can certainly be synonymous. To "do violence to" does not imply physical force, but damage. I already said the particular manner in which the term is used is obtuse, but it is most definitely nitpicking, especially when all the original comment has to offer is a comment on how he doesn't like this particular usage of the word (as I said, I am also not a fan), paying no attention to the much more important substance of the article.
- teslabox 3y agoArsenic used to be added to chicken feed, to change the color of the meat. The chickens’ arsenic droppings were used to fertilize rice fields. Rice concentrates arsenic out of the soil. I think the rice from Arkansas and other southern states are the most contaminated with arsenic. Whoops. There are cooking methods to remove arsenic from rice. Simplest method is to use a coffee percolator to run fresh hot water through the rice. The other way is to boil the rice in lots of water for five minutes, discard the water, then add fresh water and cook until completed.
- laborcontract 3y agoThis is by far the most helpful and useful comment in this thread and it’s sitting down here at the bottom. Thank you I will be doing those things.
- ThisIsMyAltAcct 3y agoI feel like this has been known for years. Don’t know why nothing has been done about it yet
- mandmandam 3y agoThe comment section here is a clue. It's truly horrifying. Deflection, projection, denial, minimizing concerns, semantic debate with near-zero, statistically insignificant levels of reading comprehension, blatant racism, ignoring the fact we've known this since 2007, etc, etc. And this is a 'well-educated' crowd, with full access to the information needed to come to a better conclusion literally a click or two away.
- anonporridge 3y agoI'd be curious to see a study that weighs the health costs of too much arsenic, with the health costs of too few calories. It's not intrinsically obvious what the cost/benefit analysis is. Obviously, this assumes that if Haiti doesn't import bad rice from the US, their calories per capita would decrease or cost per calorie increase, which isn't necessarily the case. Also obviously, we should do everything we can to decrease arsenic content for healthier food. It's akin to the problem of our housing standards and regulations that are so high, that we struggle to build low cost housing that satisfies code, so instead tons of people end up living on the street. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
- bombcar 3y agoOne way we “split the eye of the needle’s onion” or whatever is differentiate on things you “do for others” and those you “do to yourself”. For example, relax building codes for work done by the homeowner - the problem comes when people sell.
- no_wizard 3y agoI really wouldn’t be shocked if exported agricultural commodities were held to a different standard than if they were sold domestically or imported. Likely they’re only held to the standard of the exporting nation and to me it is likely that if the industry senses any form of lax enforcement many players will simply press their luck on how often they get caught by overseas regulators.
- cchi_co 3y ago[dead]
- shrubble 3y agoRice also concentrates fluoride, as does tea.
- hbarka 3y agoIt raises questions about the levels of toxins in imported and domestic grains. Who does the measurement and is the data open and trustworthy?
- washadjeffmad 3y agoThe US has thresholds at the federal and state levels for domestic food contamination. The federal limits tend to be lower to allow states to decide what they consider safe, not because they're goals, which also implies they're regularly sampled. FDA and USDA are occasionally the testers (like for PFAS) and always the arbiters, but it's the individual members of the self-regulated farming and import organizations who are responsible for getting the testing, and only the high level aggregate reports are published, I believe. Look up lab testing services - it's a big business, and they're required. You're also asking a question that you probably aren't aware of the scale of. US ag is huge and time sensitive. It's a miracle it works, and its systems run on the labor of millions. By the time that processed seasonal Starbucks muffin gets sold, the various parts of it have travelled farther than most Americans will in their entire lives.
- cchi_co 3y agoI have also heard that Indian rice has the lowest level of arsenic. Indian farmers are increasingly using rice varieties that are resistant to arsenic uptake and also the climate (hot and humid, which helps to reduce arsenic)
- alecco 3y agoCooking methods to remove arsenic from rice: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720368728 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972... Summary of bes method (PBA): pre-boil for 5', remove water, add fresh water, then cook rice normally. https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0048969720368728-ga1_lrg.jpg https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S00489697203687...
- jeffbee 3y agoPar-boiling then steaming also happens to be The Right Way to cook it, to my taste.
- consumer451 3y agoThank you so much for an actual action item. I wish that it was possible that each post could have one as useful as this.
- bethekind 3y agoDoes this work with lead and cadmium as well?
- baxtr 3y agoWon’t work with a rice cooker though :/
- jmpman 3y agoMaybe someone needs to make a rice cooker which does the 5min boil, discard method automatically. I’d buy it.
- afiori 3y agomaybe you could pre heat the water pour the rice for 5 minutes and then start fresh with new water.
- mmis1000 3y agoThat is likely to mess up the taste really hard. Rice cookers are designed to cook the rice to just the right favor. But if you use something that is pre-cooked… It's definitely going to overcook it.
- cs702 3y agoWhenever I read sad stories about poor countries like Haiti[a], I like to ponder a hypothetical scenario: If one were a god who could, with the snap of a finger, replace the country's entire population with an equal number of people, randomly sampled from a rich, diverse country (say, Canada, but any other rich, diverse country would do), how would the poor country's fortune change, if at all, over the course of a generation? --- [a] According to the World Bank, Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas: https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/haiti/overview https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/haiti/overview
- finikytou 3y agoyou can look at south africa and see those sample of people.
- bombcar 3y agoYou can look at the island that Haiti shares. Seems pretty stark.
- mglz 3y agoDo the swapped people maintain their experiences, education and general attitude towards each other?
- cs702 3y agoGreat question, very much aligned with my thinking! Yes, assume they maintain their current experience, education, and general attitude towards each other.
- mglz 3y agoThat's like an instant infusion of billions of dollars, since gainting that experience and education was paid for by the donor society. So they would almost certainly do better.
- sumeruchat 3y ago
- downWidOutaFite 3y agoIsn't this the same rice we're eating here in the US?
- colordrops 3y agoMost rice has unhealthy levels of arsenic.
- bombcar 3y agoWhat are the healthy levels of arsenic?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- colordrops 3y agoOpposite of unhealthy in this case is not "healthy", but rather lack of levels that could accumulate to dangerous levels with normal eating habits.
- anon291 3y agoNo, only American rice
- sgjohnson 3y ago> heavy metals that can increase risks of cancer and heart disease I’d say this is the least of Haiti’s problems right now, as virtually nobody there is expected to live long enough to develop any cancer or long-term heart disease.
- hnfong 3y agoA quick Google search indicates that life expectancy in Haiti is ~64 years. This is obviously inconsistent with what you're claiming.
- dralley 3y agoI doubt those numbers incorporate the chaos over the past few years, and I don't know that they'll be updated given the state of the government.
- sgjohnson 3y agoThat’s life expectancy at birth (which is still 30th worst in the world), and it doesn’t incorporate getting shot in a random act of gang violence at the old age of 17.
- dusted 3y agoBefore I understood the true depth of mans incompetence, I'd have attributed this to evil Americans keeping the best to themselves. But now I just feel sorry for both Haitians and Americans because they're probably eating the same bad rice.
- luckman212 3y agoNot trying to minimize the gravity of this situation, however I want to point out that soaking rice in water overnight prior to cooking, as well as cooking it in a larger quantity of water (excess water is drained off, rather than cooking with less water until rice is dry) has been tested to reduce arsenic levels by around 80%. I've been doing this for years, and once you make a habit out of it, it's really not a big deal. Makes me feel better about eating rice 2-3x per week. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2F1MDzyW55pg97Tdpp7gqLN/should-i-be-concerned-about-arsenic-in-my-rice https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2F1MDzyW55pg97Tdpp... [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213453019302332 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221345301...
- blacksqr 3y agoMost Hatians are critically short of both drinkable water and cooking fuel (not to mention food), so any advice to take extra steps that require extra fuel or water are likely to be ignored for the sake of short-term survival.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 1letterunixname 3y agoThis is pure FUD because it's not a racist conspiracy. Rice grown in America contains unhealthy levels of arsenic because of America's soils and the nature of rice.
- tmaly 3y agoMy neighbor, a retired chemist, tested US grown rice sold in Costco and found high level of arsenic. He said some of it comes from run off at chicken farms where they use arsenic to give the meat a better color.
- alwa 3y ago> "The flooding of U.S. rice into Haiti is not only economically violent for Haitian peyizan who struggle to sell their local product, but also violent toward the long-term health of Haitian consumers," the report said. This seems like a very strange way for a research paper to talk about chemical analyses. The Reuters article doesn’t cite the paper directly, but it’s here [0]. I note from their paper that rice from all non-Haitian origins, not just the US, contained what they describe as worrying levels of arsenic. I’m also confused by their (mislabeled) graphs attempting to suggest that the levels are routinely harmful. Those graphs all seem to reflect people whose bodies weigh between 8 and 20kg each eating 1.5 cups dry = 300g dry = 1kg cooked rice daily. That seems like a lot of rice for a baby to eat, but I don’t know what’s normal. What’s more, their graphs seem like they’re saying both local and imported rice would largely fall below the “cancer risk” threshold they show on one set of graphs, and both largely exceed the “non-cancer health outcome” thresholds they’re interested in. To top it off, in their conclusion, they mention that they know they’ve been measuring the wrong thing all along: they’re measuring total arsenic levels, while the standards they use refer to concentrations of inorganic arsenic. The EPA says that organic arsenic is nontoxic and harmless. [2] > By measuring only total arsenic levels, our measurements do not exactly correspond to thresholds set by Codex and the U.S. FDA, which are based on inorganic arsenic concentrations. A quick look at other widely-cited experimental research suggests that around 40% of the total arsenic in US rice is the harmful, inorganic kind [3]. And the remainder of the total arsenic count is the nontoxic organic kind. Which suggests that if the researchers at hand had measured the thing that was actually harmful, instead of including harmless things with a similar name, they’d find that all the rice in question was below the worrisome thresholds, even for the small humans they’re worried about. I wonder if the same policy agenda informs the rest of the editorial decisions at the “Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development.” A causal glance suggests an activist kind of flavor [1], but I don’t have much of a baseline on norms in the “food justice” discipline. [0] https://www.foodsystemsjournal.org/index.php/fsj/article/view/1221/1186 https://www.foodsystemsjournal.org/index.php/fsj/article/vie... [1] https://www.foodsystemsjournal.org/index.php/fsj https://www.foodsystemsjournal.org/index.php/fsj [2] e.g. https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2021-04/documents/arsenic_april_2021.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2021-04/documents/ar... [3] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es802612a https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es802612a
- teekert 3y ago“According to the study, average arsenic and cadmium concentrations were nearly twice as high in imported rice compared to Haitian-grown product, with some imported samples exceeding international limits.” I’m a biologist. I worry about these differences. Many things we measure in our bodies are reported in “fold change”, we plot things on logarithmic scales, things go 10x, 100x before we call them “active”. The same happened in my house, I had the lead contenting of the drinking water measured. It was 1.5 (something) - in the green. A fried does it: 2.7, orange. He is recommended to flush his pipes at the start of each day. I just can’t help but feel very weird about these very small differences between “safe” and “alarming”. How about you all?
- bboygravity 3y agoDepends on what the (something) is.
- teekert 3y agoI can look it up (ug/L or something). But my whole point is about the factors. Super low concentrations and then a factor 2 is from safe to alarming? I almost don’t buy it.
- washadjeffmad 3y agoJust consider restricted media. Below a threshold, different things happen due to rates of metabolism, preferential uptake, etc. And this isn't to convince you that your water is "safe", but lead is excreted up to a threshold, and beyond that, it can begin to accumulate in bones and teeth, which is a rate. If yours is below the amount you're likely to consume over the given period that accumulation is likely to occur, then guidance says you should try to reduce it somehow to minimize the probability of long term health effects. I don't think either of you are at risk for acute toxicity from your water levels, so you could think of it like calories; you're fine with your current caloric intake, but should you double it? Diet lead, that classic taste.
- refurb 3y ago
- Methodmaam 3y ago[flagged]
- krisboyz781 3y agoMost of Haiti doesn't eat mud cookies, what in the hell are you talking about? Most Haitians' diet consist of rice and beans. Clueless American remains clueless
- londons_explore 3y ago> The report called for an ethical investigation into U.S. rice exporters, It is common to grow rice, test it, and if it fails a test, then you sell it into another market where the test thresholds are different. However, this is unethical because safety thresholds are set imagining that different samples of a product will have different levels of contaminants. It is assumed that buyers will eat from different sources randomly. However, if some sellers are picking which country they sell to based on test results, then a market with a slightly higher safety threshold will in fact be flooded with much more contaminated products, on average. And the people will suffer as a result.
- _fat_santa 3y agoSaw a documentary yesterday called Poverty, Inc[1] and it dives into the rice imports to Haiti. While it's agreed that international aid was a good thing in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, they argued that continued aid to the country has largely destroyed native rice farming by the simple fact that it's hard to compete with something that's free. Highly recommend a watch if you haven't seen it already. Saw it yesterday and really gave a new perspective to international aid. [1]: https://www.povertyinc.org/ https://www.povertyinc.org/
- anon291 3y agoAlmost all American rice from the South (I'm assuming this is what goes to Haiti) have unhealthy levels of Arsenic due to the Civil war.