No, even US-grown rice suffers the same problem (not as the article, though). Basically rice in the southern US is grown in fields that used to be used for cotton, and the use of arsenic as a pesticide was allowed back then.
Fast forward and they're using the same fields to grow rice, and the metals are still in the soil...
I'll try and dig up some sources when I'm not mobile.
I found some sources on my own. Interesting. It looks like California rice is the safest, and white rice is better than brown.
Care to list your sources? Thanks!
I just googled "rice arsenic" and read the first page of results.
White is better than brown? Isn't white just brown with the brown removed?
Yes, but it's a lot easier to buy the rice as white rice than it is to remove the part of the plant that is harbouring the toxin at home. Even in plants, different tissues do different things.
Depends on what you mean by with the brown removed It isn't bleached white. It is like they sold white and brown potatoes at the store, where a white potato was a pealed brown potato. Just as with potatoes, apples and others, the nutrients as well as the harmful stuff tends to collect in the skin.
That's not across the board, though. My family grows rice in northeastern arkansas in fields that have not been treated as such. Still spray for bugs though.