I've recently heard that people burn all of their grabage in the countryside as there is no organized waste disposal, and, the truly troubling thing is, people use the resulting ashes as fertilizer, burned plastics and all.

I'm not a scientist and I have no idea what kind of substances pass into rice from the soil, but, as a frequent consumer of local rice, I'm a little concerned that Thai farmers might be ignoring some basic health guidelines here..

What do you think about the quality of (cheap) rice in Thailand? Any studies/reliable quotes?

I wouldn't be surprized if the rice that I much daily is contaminated in some way. After all, the local laws concerning public health seem to be quite lax. (For instance, did you see what happened to the makeshift homes of the construction workers who built the new monster hospital next to Ekkamai? They built a huge bonfire right on the lot in the middle of the city..)

Of course it's contaminated with all sort of chemicals... pesticides, weed killer, horrible fertilizer, Polychlorinated biphenyl and general unsanitary filth.

It's processed white rice, which is nutritionally equivalent to eating sugar... being structurally changed from naturally occurring polysaccharide to a modified monosacride. The good rice is fed to livestock and criminals from what I hear. But, we all know that white is good and brown is evil... right?

Other than that, eat away... it tastes good.

Upcountry Thais seem to know about rice. Why woudn't they ? I remember one time with my TW in Australia. I had sone Australian longrain rice in the cupboard which I was cooking with. The TW ran into the kitchen asking "what's that terrible smell ?" I did have some Thai jasmine rice, but was using the old rice I already had for cooking. So I asked the TW to close her eyes and I took two handfuls of uncooked rice and asked her to pick which one was the Thai rice by smelling the uncooked rice. I did this several times and each time she picked the Thai rice. Even when you go to the market in Thailand and there are 10-15 different bags of rice for sale. Some upcountry Thais can tell where each rice comes from by the look and smell. Whether it's contaminated I don't know, but I think Thais know good whether it's good rice or not.

I've recently heard that people burn all of their grabage in the countryside as there is no organized waste disposal, and, the truly troubling thing is, people use the resulting ashes as fertilizer, burned plastics and all.

I'm not a scientist and I have no idea what kind of substances pass into rice from the soil, but, as a frequent consumer of local rice, I'm a little concerned that Thai farmers might be ignoring some basic health guidelines here..

What do you think about the quality of (cheap) rice in Thailand? Any studies/reliable quotes?

I wouldn't be surprized if the rice that I much daily is contaminated in some way. After all, the local laws concerning public health seem to be quite lax. (For instance, did you see what happened to the makeshift homes of the construction workers who built the new monster hospital next to Ekkamai? They built a huge bonfire right on the lot in the middle of the city..)

Not to worry. Most of the farmers I know use nice wholesome cow shit. The rice we grow for our own consumption we don't grow in a paddy at all and use no fertilizer or pesticides.