The excessive amounts of cadmium and lead in food chain can cause health problems for humans and ecosystem. Rice is an important food in human diet. Therefore this study was conducted in order to investigate cadmium and Lead concentrations in seed rice (Oryza saliva) of paddy fields in southwest of Iran. A total of 70 rice seed samples were collected from paddy fields in five regions of Khuzestan province, Southwest Iran, during harvesting time. In the samples cadmium and Lead concentrations were measured. To assess the daily intake of Cadmium and Lead by rice, daily consumption of rice was calculated. The results showed that average concentrations of Cadmium and Lead in rice seeds were 273.6 and 121.8 μg/kg, respectively. Less than 72% of rice seed samples had Cadmium concentrations above 200 μg/kg (i.e. Guide value for cadmium); and less than 3% had Lead concentrations above 150 μg/kg (i.e. Guide value for Lead). The estimated daily intakes of cadmium by the local population was calculated to 0.59 μg/day kg bw, which corresponds to 59% of the tolerable daily intakes (i.e. 1 μg/day kg bw). Eleven out of 70 samples (15.71%) exceed the tolerable daily intakes. The dietary intakes for Lead in the local population ranged from 0.22 to 0.47 μg/day kg bw. Tolerable daily intakes for Lead is 3.6 μg/day kg bw. As a whole, long term consumption of the local rice may bear high risk of heavy metal exposure to the consumer in the study region.

Background: Rice is the second highly consumed foodstuff among Iranian people. However, high levels of cadmium (Cd) are reported in some paddy fields in Khuzestan province, Iran.