Rice is a staple food for billions of people around the world and it has been for thousands of years. However, rice is also a source of arsenic - a carcinogen- and as the planet gets warmer experts say the levels of the toxic element may increase in the plant. Veuer’s Tony Spitz has the details.
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00:00Rice is a staple food for billions of people around the world, and it has been for thousands
00:04of years. However, rice is also a source of arsenic, a carcinogen, and as the planet gets
00:09warmer, experts say the levels of the toxic element may increase in the plant. According
00:14to a 10-year study in China, higher CO2 levels and temperatures increase arsenic absorption
00:19in rice. So can the world just stop eating rice? Well, not really. In countries like Bangladesh,
00:24Myanmar, Vietnam, and Indonesia, up to 70% of daily calories come from rice alone.
00:29With Keev Nachman, professor of environmental health and engineering at John Hopkins Bloomberg
00:33School of Public Health, saying about the research,
00:36We can't pretend that we're going to take rice off the table. That's not feasible. But we need to do
00:40something differently. Still, the researchers project up to 19.3 million additional cancer
00:45cases in China if rice arsenic levels rise as predicted. The good news is that certain cooking
00:51methods can reduce arsenic, like parboiling and rinsing rice, which can lower its content by over
00:5670%. But many countries still lack arsenic regulations in rice, despite its widespread and
01:01increasing impact. And more research still needs to be done.