I'm posting this here because it seems to be the most active forum with knowledgeable people about things like soil chemistry, and I would absolutely love some clarity about all this.

Remember the whole arsenic in brown rice scare?

Here is what I've been able to gather: there is inorganic arsenic (in water or air -- which is toxic) and organic arsenic (in plants and animals) which apparently many toxicologists think is not toxic at all.
No one is warning about the arsenic in seafood, chicken, leafy greens, or mushrooms -- notably, the arsenic in seafood is said to be all organic, so it's non toxic.
But despite rice being a plant, they're saying the arsenic in it it largely inorganic. Why would that be? Wouldn't it combine with elements in the rice and become organic arsenic?

This from webmd "In the environment, arsenic combines with oxygen, chlorine, and sulfur to form inorganic arsenic compounds.
In plants and animals, arsenic combines with hydrogen and oxygen to form organic arsenic compounds."

As I looked into this whole thing, it got curiouser and curiouser.

The FDA has been monitoring toxins in food since 1991, but just a couple years ago they decided there might be too much arsenic in rice? Why did it take so many years for them to catch on?

They said they would do more testing -- testing what? They already know the minimum level of arsenic/day/kg of body weight that produces no discernable rise in cancers. (about 3.0 micrograms--that's/day/kg body weight) and they know how much arsenic is in a typical serving of brown rice (average 4.2 micrograms -- Lundberg, anyway)

Simple math tells me I can eat a whole lot of rice before I'll see any problems -- more than I'd ever want to eat.

So . . .after they did their testing, they come out with -- it's not a problem, go ahead and eat your rice. (but not until after everyone is scared silly of rice.)

Even though the FDA says go ahead and eat your rice, popular mags are still coming out with warnings like consumer reports' point system, which would limit a kid to a couple rice cakes a week. (of course, you have to pay for consumer reports in order to get a copy of their point system)

NONE of this makes sense to me -- not the warnings, not the hoopla, and not the continuation of the warnings in popular mags despite the FDA admitting that there were no WMD's, I mean arsenic overload, in the first place.

Can anyone shine light on this for me?

The only explanations I can think of are:
Someone at the FDA hates the Lundbergs.
Or someone said, "How can we freak out all the grainolas? Hmmmm. . . let's see, what do they eat a lot of? Brown rice--isn't that all they eat? Let's tell them brown rice is poison! That would be hilarious."

Any enlightenment would be appreciated. And if this belongs in another forum, just let me know and I'll move it.