30260: Leiderman (followup) re: 30251, 30243: Haiti's phantom farmers; arsenic and [old?] rice (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leiderman@mindspring.com


27 March 2007

Dear Readers:

Thanks to Mr. Jacob for his followup in the matter of the precarious economic position of Haitian native rice against the continuing flood of American-grown rice (a.k.a. "Miami" rice because of its usual port of shipment) as dramatically shown in Table 1 of the referenced report <http://www.american.edu/TED/haitirice.htm>

two things came to mind as I read the report and combined it with what I heard on the radio over the weekend.  I'd appreciate any readers' comments and follow-up:

I.  HAITI'S PHANTOM FARMERS

Josiane Georges' <jgeorges@cepr.net> American University TED* case study 735, June '04 "Trade and the Disappearance of Haitian Rice" <http://www.american.edu/TED/haitirice.htm> is a good one that I'd recommend for everyone's reading. [*Trade & Environment Database, c/o Dr. James R. Lee, <jlee@american.edu> American University, The School of International Service, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW. Washington, DC 20016-8071]

however, I noticed the citation in Table 2: Haiti - Rice Production Statistics, "No. of farming families engaged in rice production (cultivation and processing) 93,000 families (20% of the population)" [Celine Charveriat and Penny Fowler, Oxfam International. Rice Dumping in Haiti and the Development Box Proposal. [web page*] March 2002]  I think either the number of families or the percentage of population may be inaccurate by a factor of two:  Haiti's population is approximately 9 million.  20% of 9 million is almost two million.  95,000 families would have to have almost 20 members per family to equal 20% of the total population.  a more conservative number (say 6-10 per family) would equal less than a million, so 10% of population.  I'd appreciate readers looking over these and other data in the TED report. [*no longer seems to be online]

I have never seen a book of agricultural statistics from the Government of Haiti, but the recent report of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization is online and may deserve reading: FAO Country Profiles and Mapping Information System -- Haiti
http://www.fao.org/countryProfiles/index.asp?lang=en&iso3=HTI&subj=4

II.  ARSENIC AND [OLD?] RICE

for the past few years, a distinguished scientist in Scotland has been repeatedly signaling about excessive arsenic in American rice: "...[A] 120-lb person consuming 1 lb of U.S. rice grain per day would be exceeding the maximum daily intake of arsenic provisionally set by the World Health Organization," per below, as cited in Environmental Science and Technology (American Chemical Society) 2005 and 2007, the latest being ASAP Article 10.1021/es061489k S0013-936X(06)01489-1 <http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/esthag/asap/html/es061489k.html>
Web Release Date: February 21, 2007: "Market Basket Survey Shows Elevated Levels of As in South Central U.S. Processed Rice Compared to California: Consequences for Human Dietary Exposure." P. N. Williams, A. Raab, J. Feldmann, and A. A. Meharg, School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 3UU, U.K., and Department of Chemistry, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 3UE, U.K.

therefore, "the rest of the story" of the consequences of Haiti's importing large amounts of American rice, is that it may also be importing arsenic poisoning, i.e. contaminating the food supply of almost 9 million people.  to my knowledge, Prof. Meharg in Scotland has not yet tested for arsenic levels in Haitian-grown rice, but he may be open to the idea:  Professor Andrew Meharg, Chair in Biogeochemistry, Fellow of the Royal Society of  Edinburgh, School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Cruickshank Building, St Machar Drive, Aberdeen, AB24 3UU  ph +44 (0)1224 272264  fx: +44 (0)1224 272703  a.meharg@abdn.ac.uk
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/biologicalsci/staff/details.php?id=a.meharg&filt=

I urge representatives of the Government of Haiti and all NGO's and charities involved in Haiti's food supply to ask Prof. Meharg to examine and report the quality of Haiti's native rice.

thank you,

Stuart Leiderman
Environmental Response/4th World Project
"Environmental Refugees and Ecological Restoration"
P.O. Box 382, Durham, New Hampshire 03824 USA
leiderman@mindspring.com  603.776.0055

- - - - - - -

http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=07-P13-00012&segmentID=2

Rice and... Arsenic? 23 March 2007

GELLERMAN: In states where cotton was once king, today rice reigns
supreme. Consumption of rice in the U.S. has doubled over the last 25
years, and eighty percent of the rice grown here comes from states in
the South Central part of the country. A lot of it is grown in former
cotton fields. And when cotton was grown there, a lot of these fields
were treated with pesticides that contained arsenic. Dr. Andrew Meharg is a bio-geo-chemist at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and an expert on arsenic in the environment. He investigated rice from these fields and he found that it contains unusually high levels of the toxic heavy metal.
MEHARG: The lowest levels are in Egyptian rice where you have 0.05
parts per million in the rice. U.S. rice from the south central region has around about 0.3 so that's 6 times higher than Egyptian rice. It's
typically 4 times higher than Indian rice you would buy so it's quite
substantially more.
GELLERMAN: Well Dr. Meharg, how does arsenic get into rice in the
south central region of the United States?
MEHARG: Well it has to be thought of in detail, but there has been a long history of using arsenical pesticides for cotton production, both as a pesticide for the boll weevil and also arsenic was used as a desiccant to remove leaves before boll harvest and that's been going on for like the last hundred years. So over that time there's been heavy use of arsenical pesticides in that cotton belt area.                  GELLERMAN: Arsenic is a naturally occurring chemical. How do you know that this is not just, you know, part of what's in the background soil?
MEHARG: Well, there's a lot of literature out there about concerns,
particularly in Arkansas, about rice breeding because when they grow
rice on this soils that'd been previously treated with arsenic they suffer from a disease called stripped head where crop yields are decreased and they specifically bred rice to grow on these high arsenical soils. So the fact is there's been a large breeding program for states such as Arkansas to produce rice, which can withstand high levels of arsenic in soils. And that's a pretty big clue that arsenic is a problem in those soils. And when you look at the background geochemical data, which we've done for the different rice growing regions, which are a pretty good measure of what's the background level of arsenic in the environment and what's the background levels in soils, they're much lower in the South-Central states than they are for California. Yet we find higher levels in the South-Central U.S. rice states than we do for California. So from the geochemical evidence it would suggest that California should have higher levels of arsenic naturally in rice rather than the south central region.
GELLERMAN: Are there fields in the United States that were once treated with arsenic for non-food crops and now being used to raise food, besides rice?
MEHARG: Historically arsenic was, inorganic arsenicals were used as a first generation pesticide and they were widely used famously for orchard pesticide treatment where they used lead arsenate.  The answer to that is yes but the main problem of arsenic in agriculture is really particular for rice due to the way that rice is grown. Basically rice is the only major crop that is grown under water saturated soil conditions, i.e. the soil is flooded. And under those conditions arsenic is mobilized where with other crops they're grown with plenty of oxygen around the root system and the actual arsenic in bulk is locked in the soil and doesn't get into the plants to such an extent as for rice.
GELLERMAN: In Bangladesh where they have very high levels of arsenic in the water there's a huge problem and people manifest arsenic poisoning in a variety of ways, but one of the ways is that they get sores on their hands and their feet, the soles of their feet. Um wouldn't we                     expect to see something like that here in the United States?                     MEHARG: When you do the risk assessment, the risk assessment has been done for the USA by the US EPA and they've actually found that there is a risk for the US based population and that's why the US levels in water were reduced, because the risk from arsenic to the US population was more perceptible, and above background, particularly for lung and bladder cancers and what we're finding is that the levels of arsenic in rice for certain subpopulations exceed those current levels for safety and water. And eating high levels of rice, they're actually well over what they should be consuming.
GELLERMAN: How concerned should the average consumer of rice in the United States be? I think I'm pretty average. I eat rice two times a
week or so.
MEHARG: I think the average consumer should not be that concerned. It's more the people who have high amounts of rice in their diet. And there's a range of subpopulations which'll have higher rice levels,                     amounts of rice in their diets such as Hispanics, Asians, also people                     who suffer from like, celiac disease where you have gluten intolerances, tend to use rice as a wheat substitute. So it's those people who are of concern. Also rice is used in baby formula, as well, so that might be a concern it's really the populations who consume a high amount of rice that should be concerned. And they are substantial again four percent of the US population is of Asian origin and so four percent of 250 million is a lot of people.
GELLERMAN: Well Dr. Meharg I want to thank you very much.
MEHARG: No problem.
GELLERMAN: Dr. Andrew Meharg's paper on the elevated levels of arsenic in the South-Central United States appears in the latest edition of the journal, Environmental Science and Technology.

- - - - - - -

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/83/i32/8332notw9.html
August 8,  2005 Volume 83, Number 32 p. 14
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE -- ARSENIC IN RICE

Survey ranks U.S. rice high in arsenic, but its conclusions may be flawed  MAUREEN ROUHI

Arsenic levels in U.S. long-grain rice are the highest found in a recent survey of rice from different countries (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2005, 39, 5531). Nevertheless, this finding, which has received some media attention, should not alarm people, sources familiar with the study tell C&EN.

The survey--by Andrew A. Meharg and co-workers at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland--reports an average arsenic level in U.S. rice of 0.26 Âg/g, based on seven samples. It means that a 120-lb person consuming 1 lb of U.S. rice grain per day would be exceeding the
maximum daily intake of arsenic provisionally set by the World Health Organization.

The survey cannot represent national levels because its sample size is small, notes soil organic chemistry professor John M. Duxbury of Cornell University. David Coia, a spokesman for the USA Rice Federation, concurs: "To make global comparisons based on limited sample size is bad science."

Arsenic in U.S. rice is predominantly organic (58%), the survey also
finds. By contrast, arsenic in rice from Europe, Bangladesh, and India is primarily inorganic (64%, 80%, and 81%, respectively). Inorganic
arsenic is known to be far more toxic than organic species. The data
indicate that arsenic in U.S. rice "is not a big problem for U.S.
consumers," Duxbury says.

Richard H. Loeppert, a soil chemistry professor at Texas A&M
University, agrees: "Rice is a minor contributor to the total arsenic intake by somebody in the U.S."

Meharg and coworkers suggest that arsenic in U.S. rice may be due to
cultivation in areas where arsenic-based pesticides had been widely used. Loeppert disagrees: "Generally, U.S. rice is not growing in areas I consider to be high in arsenic."

- - - - - - -

From: Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>
Sent: Mar 27, 2007 6:39 AM
To: Bob Corbett's Haiti list <haiti@lists.webster.edu>
Subject: 30251:  Jacob reply : 30243: Karshan (news)  (fwd)

Stephen Jacob

According to a few sites, Haiti imports most of it's rice from the US.  As of 2005, the US accounted for nearly 50% of Haiti's total imports so you could figure that most of Haiti's food comes from the USA also.   Earlier data shows that US typically sends roughly 200,000 metric tons of rice to Haiti annually.

The following link has some more information about Haitian rice production:  http://www.american.edu/TED/haitirice.htm