Inorganic As Concentration in Rice Grown Around the Abandoned Mining Areas and its Health Risk Assessment

The current study was carried out to investigate total and inorganic arsenic (As) concentrations in 112 rice samples (husked rice and polished rice) grown around the abandoned mining areas and to estimate the potential health risk through dietary intake of rice in Korea. Mean concentrations of total As in husked rice and polished rice were 0.23 and 0.13 mg kg -1 , respectively. Also, average inorganic As concentrations in husked rice and polished rice were 0.09 and 0.05 mg kg -1 , respectively. These levels are lower than the standard guideline value (0.2 mg kg -1 ) for inorganic As in polished rice recommended by Korea Ministry of Food and Drug Safety and Codex. For health risk assessment, the average values of cancer risk probability was 5.7×10 -5 which was less than the acceptable cancer risk of 10 -6 ~10 -4 for regulatory purpose. Also, hazard quotient values were lower than 1.0. Therefore, these results demonstrated that human exposure to inorganic As through dietary intake of rice collected from abandoned mining areas might not cause adverse health effects.