Here's an abstract from the researcher, Tsanangurayi Tongesayi. Not this exact presentation, but apparently the same research:
Lead was present in all the foods samples and its concentration ranged from 4.3 to 17.9 µg/g. Some baby rice food had levels of Pb as high as 12.5±0.2 µg/g.
(Google Cache because of the intellectual property circus).
The FDA's recommended limit, expressed in total Pb ingested per day (only figure I could find), is
The FDA’s recommended Provisional Total Tolerable Intake Level (PTTIL) for lead in children less than 6 years of age is 6 μg lead/day. For children 7 years and older, the PTTIL is 15 μg lead/day. It increases to 75 μg lead/day for adults (USFDA 1993).
This limit can be exceeded with a fraction of a gram of rice (for small children) -- literally a single grain. You could eat a small bullet's weight of lead in a few hundred kg -- several years of eating.
And here's an FDA survey of the US food supply: 731 food products, about 10,000 samples, and nothing within orders of magnitude of this.
In China, the Occam's razor explanation is that the lead is really there. China's population is freaked out by food safety because of all the food scandals that have happened over the years. Melamanine in milk, for which milk company executives were actually executed, reuse and reselling of cooking oil found in gutters, the list goes on and on and on.
I have no idea about the conditions in Taiwan, but in China, the Occam's razor explanation is unfortunately the negative option because it's proven to be so common. Recently for example, Hong Kong folks are super mad that mainland China folks are coming over and buying up all the milk powder for their babies. Why don't mainland China folks buy milk powder in mainland China? Well, there you go.
edit: for those who haven't read the article, the article states, "The researchers found the highest levels of lead in rice from China and Taiwan"
Lead is a neurotoxin that severely impairs cognitive development and intellectual performance in children. It causes blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases in adults in addition to inducing calcium deficiency by replacing calcium in bones. Agriculture, mining and the general chemical industry are increasingly contaminating the environment, resulting in toxic heavy metal(loids) such as lead getting into agricultural food products. The level of environment contamination is not monolithic across the globe, thanks to geography and differences in environmental regulations. However, with the globalized food market, populations in both polluted and non-polluted geographical areas are equally at risk of lead exposure through food. We measured the levels of lead in rice that is imported into the U.S. using XRF and the data was validated using a NIST1568a reference sample. Lead levels ranged from 5.95±0.72 to 11.9±0.6 mg/kg and the calculated Daily Exposure amounts were significantly higher than the Provisional Total Tolerable Intakes for all age groups.
Thanks for pulling those numbers. But something doesn't quite add up.. The first linked report says:
Samples of rice products from the US, South America, Asia, and Europe were purchased from local supermarkets and analyzed using XRF and GFAAS. Lead was present in all the foods samples and its concentration ranged from 4.3 to 17.9 µg/g.
So both domestic US rice and imported rice were in the 4.3-17.0 µg/g range, which if true would contradict the FDA's results, and mean that US rice was order-of-magnitude as dangerous as imported rice. What are we (or I) missing?
It doesn't make sense to me either. If the FDA found n.d. levels of lead in all their samples, you would expect some of the new study's samples to have low levels as well.
Lead was present in all the foods samples and its concentration ranged from 4.3 to 17.9 µg/g. Some baby rice food had levels of Pb as high as 12.5±0.2 µg/g.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:d4lyxhr...
(Google Cache because of the intellectual property circus).
The FDA's recommended limit, expressed in total Pb ingested per day (only figure I could find), is
The FDA’s recommended Provisional Total Tolerable Intake Level (PTTIL) for lead in children less than 6 years of age is 6 μg lead/day. For children 7 years and older, the PTTIL is 15 μg lead/day. It increases to 75 μg lead/day for adults (USFDA 1993).
http://health.mo.gov/living/environment/hazsubstancesites/pd...
This limit can be exceeded with a fraction of a gram of rice (for small children) -- literally a single grain. You could eat a small bullet's weight of lead in a few hundred kg -- several years of eating.
And here's an FDA survey of the US food supply: 731 food products, about 10,000 samples, and nothing within orders of magnitude of this.
http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/FoodScienceResearch/TotalD...
(pp. 69-80). Notably, their rice samples (#50) had undetectable amounts of lead, at a detection threshold of 0.007 mg/kg (= µg/g).
(I'm beginning to suspect someone confused a mg/mcg/μg somewhere; that seems like the Occam's razor explanation. Otherwise, this looks really bad).