Hello and welcome to Nutrition Facts. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Greger. Today we're

going to explore smart nutrition choices based naturally on facts. Whenever

there's a new drug or surgical procedure, you could be assured that you and your

doctor will probably hear about it because there's a corporate budget

driving its promotion. But what about advances in the field of nutrition? That's

what this podcast is all about. Today's episode is something of a puzzler. How

can the rice industry get away with selling a product containing a hundred

times the acceptable cancer risk? That is not a rhetorical question. It's a real

one. Even at low-level exposure arsenic is not just a known human carcinogen,

but it may impair our immune function and increase our risk of cardiovascular

disease and diabetes. Here's a story about the effects of too much arsenic in

the diet. When people hear arsenic, they think of it as an acute poison and

indeed a tiny amount of 100 milligrams could kill you in an hour. That's like

the weight of a tenth of a paperclip. But there's also chronic arsenic

poisoning, or even a dose 10,000 times as small can be harmful if you're exposed

day after day for years at a time. Chief among the concerns is cancer.

Arsenic is classified as a class one carcinogen. That's the highest level.

Things known to cause cancer in humans alongside stuff like asbestos,

cigarette smoke, formaldehyde, plutonium, processed meat, consumption of bacon

ham hot dogs and lunch meat. So arsenic is pretty bad stuff.

Implicated in tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of cancer cases

worldwide every year. Of course, cancers just are number two killer. What about

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