Heavy Metals in Rice

Asian rice consumption is more than 100 kilograms per capita per year in many of its nations. For the more than 500 million Asians who lead poor lives, rice is the only staple food they can afford to provide them with the calories they need. According to studies by (Tsukahara et al. , 2003), it is estimated that this rate of consumption may decline shortly as people’s incomes keep on rising and they are devising their diets. It has been confirmed in some of the high-income countries of Asia such as Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea where there has been a significant decline in rice consumption in the last three decades. In the last half of the 20th century, the consumption of rice per head was reported to have steadily risen from averagely 85 kilograms per year to 103 kilograms per year.

But, as Asia found its way out of poverty zone, its people began to have diverse consumer diets which made rice to become more available and more affordable. The influence of As Pb Cd to the human body Out of the 106 known elements, more than 80 of them are metals which are categorized into essential and non-essential minerals. The nonessential metals are toxic metals where lead, cadmium, and arsenic fall under. The toxic metals are not metabolically degradable unlike the essential metals hence their accumulation in the living tissues can pose serious health problems or even death (Tchounwou et al. Bangladesh, Asia’s top rice dog, however, tops the list of countries that are contaminated with the arsenic chemical. India and China follow, and this shows that Asian countries have more arsenic contamination compared to other continents (Naja and Volesky, 2009).

Almost a third of the arsenic chemicals have been estimated to be originating from natural processes with volcanic eruption being the most important source of the arsenic chemical. Contact with the arsenic chemical causes severe health effects that include skin disorders such as pigmentation and keratosis which are the most common external manifestations of the condition. According to world health organization, more than 5000 people have been found to be affected by arsenic-related health infections just one country, Bengal. some studies have shown that the use of cadmium has recently increased in the recent past years; the usage estimated to be almost 10 percent. It is a rare element, just because it is in demand for several uses and is uniformly distributed across the earth’s crust.

There is no specific place that the component is concentrated more than the other. It naturally occurs in the form of inorganic and complex compounds that have chelating agents that are also naturally occurring. In the case that an area has a higher concentration of the metal in its environment that means that it is heavily industrialized with a lot of refinery and smelting industries. The metal tends to accumulate in the human body at the rate of more than 30% in the kidneys and more than 15% in the liver. Chronic cadmium poisoning affects the kidney by producing proteinuria that causes the formation of kidney stones in the body. There is no specific agreement in the acceptable levels of safety in the level of cadmium intake.

The United States has set its safety level of cadmium intake to be 10ppb, but the sampling of the surface water in the United States revealed more concentration of the metals in the waters. Severe exposure to cadmium in the air leads to many chronic effects with the two main effects being lung proteinuria and lung emphysema. Finally, the carcinogenicity of the metal has always been studied in many epidemiological types of research of workers who are exposed occupationally, but the concerned agency considered the existing information as inadequate enough to conclude. The legislation on the heavy metals There are various legislations that govern the limits of the heavy metals in day to day use. Such legislation is the European Union legislation.

It has legislations on the technique that is employed when sampling and analyzing the metal. It lays down the specific sampling and analysis method that is used for the official control of the levels of lead, arsenic, and cadmium, together with other metals. The detection limits of ICP-OES using the PerkinElmer information gives the limits as follows in microgram per liter; As- 1, Pb- 1 and Cd 0. Reference List Muhammad, S. , Shah, M. T. and Khan, S. Naja, G. M. and Volesky, B. Toxicity and sources of Pb, Cd, Hg, Cr, As, and radionuclides in the environment.  Heavy Metals in the Environment; Wang, LK, Chen, JP, Hung, Y. In Molecular, clinical and environmental toxicology (pp. Springer, Basel. Tsukahara, T. , Ezaki, T. , Moriguchi, J.