People who eat a lot of rice are exposed to dangerous levels of arsenic which can cause lung and bladder cancer, researchers at Queen’s University in Belfast claim.

Now, they have discovered that cooking rice in a coffee percolator, rather than a pan, successfully flushes away up to 85 percent of the poison.

"This is a very significant breakthrough as this offers an immediate solution to decreasing inorganic arsenic in the diet," said Andy Meharg, professor of Plant and Soil Sciences at Queen's University in Belfast's Institute for Global Food Security.

"We discovered that by using percolating technology, where cooking water is continually passed through rice in a constant flow, we could maximize removal of arsenic," he said.

Rice is the only major crop grown under the flooded conditions of paddy fields. It is this flooding that releases inorganic arsenic, normally locked up in soil minerals, which is then absorbed by the plant. Too much arsenic is associated with a range of health problems.

There are a lot of practical solutions in removing inorganic arsenic from rice, from agricultural management and cultivar selection and breeding.

Changing dietary practice and food consumer advice to reduce rice in diets is also an option. There are a range of gluten-free alternatives to rice, so rethinking baby foods is an obvious way to proceed.

Children and infants are of particular concern as they eat around three times more rice than adults, baby rice being a popular food for weaning, and their organs are still developing.

However, researchers in Belfast say families can take proactive action to protect children by using the coffee percolation method for cooking.

Queen’s is trying to develop a bespoke rice cooker based on a percolation system, this means that consumers could soon have this technology in their own kitchen.

The results are published in the PLOS ONE journal.