>>2074It's not really a regulation issue, it's just that arsenic is naturally present in the water/soil in much of the US and rice tends to uptake metals more efficiently than most other common grains. There's no economically feasible way to prevent the metals from getting in the rice.
But yeah, I wouldn't eat southwestern US grown rice every day. The California rice should be fine. And white rice has less metals, although that includes good metals like zinc too.
And like you said, it's all relative risk. There is no known safe consumption rate of arsenic, but we usually consider a 1:100,000 or 1:1,000,000 cancer risk as the
"acceptable" amount, depending on the regulatory agency.