by Mike Adams
the Health Ranger
September 15, 2013
from
NaturalNews
Website
Spanish version
There is arsenic in rice, and it's
generally higher in brown rice than in white rice.
Consumer Reports tested 223 samples of rice products in 2012 and
found significant levels of arsenic in most of them, including
inorganic arsenic (the really toxic kind).
As Consumer Reports found, it's not unusual to see arsenic at levels
of 200 ppb or more in rice-based baby cereals.
Click here for the complete test results.
The release of this information freaked out the U.S. rice industry,
resulting in enormous pressure being put on the FDA to try to
assuage fears that rice products were contaminated with arsenic
(which they are).
So the FDA, always working in the interests of food corporations
rather than the public, issued a statement saying that yes, there
was arsenic in rice, but no, it didn't pose any "short-term" health
risks.
Well, we already knew that. Otherwise people would be dropping dead
from eating rice. But what the FDA totally glossed over was the long-term health risks from chronic exposure to arsenic.
That's where our real concerns are found, and that's the issue that
the FDA completely ignored.
The
FDA's exact language on this is,
"agency scientists determined
that the amount of detectable arsenic is too low in the rice and
rice product samples to cause any immediate or short-term adverse
health effects."
Yeah, goofballs. We already knew that.
FDA cover-up blatant
FDA's Reassurance On Arsenic In Rice Not So
Reassuring, wrote Rachel Zimmerman of Boston's NPR
station WBUR.
"When I read the updated FDA materials... it became
clear that we should still be concerned about arsenic in our rice,"
she wrote.
The FDA's glossing over the arsenic problem was so blatant that even
WIRED Magazine got in on the backlash and published a story by
Deborah Blum that
essentially accuses the FDA of a cover-up.
The story is a good one. It's the kind of thing you might have read
in Natural News five years ago. The FDA involved in a toxic food
cover-up? The very idea used to be called a "conspiracy theory." Now
the idea is so mainstream - thanks to publications like Natural News
spearheading the truth about the
FDA - that even
WIRED covers it today.
Nevertheless, there's a whole lot you're not being told about
arsenic in foods. In fact, the real cover-up is far bigger than
arsenic in rice...
Lead and cadmium are far
more toxic than arsenic
The toxic elements lead and cadmium are
probably 2-3 orders of magnitude more toxic than arsenic, generally
speaking. While each metal targets different body organs and
metabolic pathways, the overall toxicity of lead and cadmium is many
times that of
arsenic.
And the tests I'm conducting on cadmium in rice products are
frequently showing levels of 2,000-3,000 ppb. (That's 2 - 3 ppm.)
This is ten times the level of arsenic typically found in
rice products.
And given that cadmium is, roughly speaking, 100 to 1,000 times more
toxic to the human body, we are talking about a problem that is
1,000-10,000 times worse than the problem of
arsenic in
rice.
So why isn't anybody talking about cadmium in rice?
Probably because the issue becomes quickly politicized when the
conversation turns to rice grown in China.
In China, 89 percent of the rivers used to irrigate rice are heavily
contaminated with cadmium.
"A 2011 master's thesis by Liu
Chun, a graduate student at Hebei Agricultural Institute, noted that
his tests detected excessive amounts of seven different heavy metals
including cadmium in the Xiang [river]," wrote
MarketWatch.com
"Some 89 percent of the sampled water registered
dangerous levels of cadmium."
China's version of the FDA found that over 44% of all rice being
served at local restaurants was heavily contaminated with cadmium.
Much of the rice (and rice products) sold in the USA are imported
from China, and as a result they are routinely and widely
contaminated with cadmium.
The situation is so bad that I have personally stopped eating
organic brown rice until I can identify a really clean source,
at which point I will of course share that source with Natural News
readers.
Arsenic has been found
at 1,000 times higher levels in edible seaweed
If you're really concerned about arsenic
in foods - and you probably should be - you'll be shocked to know
that we're finding it at over 1,000 times the level in some edible
seaweed products.
Yep, the lab tests conducted by Natural News are revealing
arsenic at over 200 ppm in some seaweed products. That's 1,000
times the level generally being reported in rice.
Now, you can argue that Americans tend to eat a lot more rice than
they do seaweed, and that's absolutely true.
It is, after all, the total daily
intake of arsenic per kg of body weight that's the real issue
here. But for those who do eat seaweed - or for lactating moms who
eat seaweed and breastfeed their children - 200 ppm arsenic is
potentially a very alarming level.
Arsenic is more toxic
when you don't sweat
Most people don't know that arsenic
tends to collect in your skin. And the primary detoxification
pathway for arsenic (once it accumulates in your skin)
is sweating.
We live in a society today where a great many people are terrified
of breaking a sweat. They live in air conditioned houses and work in
air conditioned offices. They hate gyms and hate walking outdoors.
They never sweat, and as a result they never remove arsenic from
their skin.
So it builds up, year after year, to the point of causing severe
skin reactions. Search for "arsenic and skin lesions" and you'll see
what I mean.
Arsenic also damages your lungs, bladder, heart and kidneys while
increasing your risk of many types of cancer along the way. Arsenic
is bad news. This is why many people who don't sweat on a routine
basis benefit greatly from infra-red sauna treatments.
The saunas force them to sweat, and in
doing so they eliminate large quantities of toxins (which is why
it's important to shower after sweating in a sauna).
There's a LOT more
arsenic in chicken than in rice
Finally, here's something not
being reported in the press.
There is far more arsenic in
conventionally-raised chicken than is currently being reported in
rice.
In 2011,
even the FDA had to admit there was arsenic in chicken.
You want to know why there's arsenic in chicken? Because chicken
producers feed arsenic to chicken on purpose. It's all part of
the corporate run factory chicken production system to maximize
profits while compromising the health of the consumer.
Chipotle, by the way, just released an amazing, powerful new video
called "The Scarecrow" that brilliantly depicts the issue of
factory-farmed
chicken.
Watch it here:
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