Rice imported from China loaded with toxic levels of lead

Monday, April 15, 2013 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: rice, lead contamination, imported

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(NaturalNews) A report released by the American Chemical Society reveals that rice imported into the United States from China and other countries contains very high levels of lead.

The FDA has established a "provisional total tolerable intake" (PTTI) level for lead, but some of the rice samples tested for this research exceeded the PTTI by 12,000%.

Imported rice was reportedly sampled from "Bhutan, Italy, China, Taiwan, India, Israel, the Czech Republic and Thailand," reports the BBC.

Lead is extremely damaging to developing brains and contributes to organ failure. It was removed from gasoline ("unleaded"), paint and other industrial products in the United States for precisely these reasons.

Lead toxicity produces symptoms that include:

• Muscle weakness
• Gastrointestinal distress (constipation or diarrhea)
• Kidney damage
• Neurological damage
• Short-term memory failures, lack of concentration
• Depression

and many more.

Imported rice is heavily contaminated with lead because it's irrigated with heavily polluted waters

This story further supports my warning to avoid foods grown in China unless you know the concentration of metals in those foods. China remains the world's most polluted agricultural hub, and a wide array of metals are routinely found in samples from China, including cadmium, lead, arsenic and sometimes mercury.

China refuses to enforce environmental regulations in its country, and in some cases the river water used for irrigating crops for export contains industrial waste in the form of heavy metals, solvents and dangerous organic compounds.

This has led to the rise of so-called "cancer villages" across China, where cancer rates are skyrocketing due to chronic exposure to toxic chemicals.

This article is not about the brown rice protein extracted in China and sold in the USA as a protein supplement. We have already completed one round of testing for that product, but we won't release test results until we conduct another round of testing with a different sample (for accuracy).

Buy rice grown in the USA

The United States only imports about 7% of its rice, so you have plenty of options for purchasing rice grown in the USA (if you read the labels). Rice is grown in seven U.S. states, including Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida.

Rice has not yet been commercially turned over to Monsanto and GMOs, so purchasing rice grown in the USA means you are avoiding GMOs while likely reducing exposure to potentially harmful levels of heavy metals. This is especially important if you are pregnant, breastfeeding or preparing meals for children.

So look for "USA grown" on labels when buy rice at the stores.

The (really) big picture

Although this is worthy of another article entirely, I am working on a scientific assessment of typical exposures to heavy metals found in foods. I am testing the theory that says people around the world are being permanently brain damaged by heavy metals in foods, vaccines, supplements and even pharmaceuticals. This would explain why so many people seem so incredibly stupid -- they're actually "brain damaged" victims of chronic metals contamination.

In researching this, we have reached an agreement with a U.S.-based laboratory that has given us access to a high-end technology capable of detecting parts per trillion of most elements, including arsenic, aluminum, lead and so on.

This technology is very expensive (a typical lab setup costs $1 million), but we have been pumping money into testing in order to assess incoming raw materials samples. What we've found is very disturbing: We are having to reject many suppliers due to metals contamination.

We are also learning that contaminated products are readily sold throughout the "natural" products industry. Many online retailers simply do not conduct contamination tests, most likely because they don't really want to know what they might find.

Here at the Natural News Store, however, we test everything we sell, and we reject sources that do not have a "clean" profile when it comes to trace metals. This is one reason why our store has a smaller selection than other online retailers.