Arsenic (As) species were quantified by HPLC-HG-AFS in water and vegetables from a rural area of West Bengal (India). Inorganic species predominated in vegetables (including rice) and drinking water; in fact, inorganic arsenic (i-As) represented more than 80% of the total arsenic (t-As) content. To evaluate i-As intake in an arsenic affected rural village, a food survey was carried out on 129 people (69 men and 60 women). The data from the survey showed that the basic diet, of this rural population, was mainly rice and vegetables, representing more than 50% of their total daily food intake. During the periods when nonvegetarian foods (fish and meat) were scarce, the importance of rice increased, and rice alone represented more than 70% of the total daily food intake. The food analysis and the food questionnaires administrated led us to establish a daily intake of i-As of about 170 microg i-As day (-1), which was above the tolerable daily intake of 150 microg i-As day (-1), generally admitted. Our results clearly demonstrated that food is a very important source of i-As and that this source should never be forgotten in populations depending heavily on vegetables (mainly rice) for their diet.
A Carbonell-Barrachina. Contribution of water and cooked rice to an estimation of the dietary intake of inorganic arsenic in a rural village of West Bengal, India. Food Additives and Contaminants, 2007, 25 (01)
13showed that the arsenic concentration in cooked rice was always higher than that 14 in raw rice and ranged from 227 to 1642 µg kg 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59
15Recently, it has been considered that foods are responsible for an important part 16 of arsenic intake, and studies on total arsenic (t-As) in food obtained from
22In regions (Carbonell-Barrachina et al. 1998;Abedin et al. 2002; Meharg 2004).
30Correct estimation of arsenic intake should consider not only the arsenic content 31 of the raw product but also the content of the contaminant in the product in the 32 form in which it is consumed by the population (raw or cooked to be discarded (Bae et al. 2002).
9In the literature there are data for total arsenic contents in raw and cooked rice
22The aim of the present study was to determine total and inorganic arsenic 23 contents in cooked rice using arsenic polluted cooking water. As contamination in the groundwater.
11Food questionnaire
12A 24 h dietary recall questionnaire was administered to homes in the studied it was administered by professionals from this society.
21The number of interviewees was set at 115 (60 male and 55 female), with ages periods of the year and varieties were analyzed for total and inorganic arsenic 4 concentrations ( Table I). As expected boro rices contained higher t-As and i-As
29
5concentrations than aus and aman samples; these higher contents are related to 6 the use of higher volume of arsenic polluted groundwater for irrigation of the 7 boro rice plants (grown during summer time) compared to aus and aman plants.
8After carefully study of information summarized in Table I, authors decided to 9 select one of the boro varieties, the khitish rice (IET-4094), for their experiments 10 because boro rices are those representing the highest potential health risks for 11 humans.
13Cooking conditions
14Worldwide, there are three common methods of cooking rice (Sengupta et al.
25The first experiment was conducted to investigate effect of a) arsenic species
31The food survey carried out in this study showed that none of the three methods
32described above was the most popular in the studied rural village; the most 33 popular rice cooking method was in between methods "a" and "c" (it is a hybrid 34 in the evolution of method "a" towards method "c"). The unwashed rice is boiled
35with a volume of water 1.5-4 times the weight of rice; the wash step is omitted.
4The second experiment was carried out to investigate the effect of arsenic 5 speciation in the cooking water on the arsenic speciation in the cooked rice. Rice 6 was cooked in the same way as described for the first expe...
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