Australian researchers recommend we rinse our rice to avoid ingesting plastics, according to a world-first study measuring the levels of microplastic in rice. The lead author of the research, Jake O’Brien, said that people might consume 3 to 4 mg of plastic through a single-serve of uncooked rice. Plastics in instant rice, which undergoes more processing, were four-fold higher, according to the study just published in the Journal of Hazardous Material. “All of our samples, regardless of the packaging it came in, had some levels of plastic,” O’Brien told 9News. Another analysis carried out by the University of Newcastle, Australia (pdf) revealed that people are consuming about 2,000 tiny pieces of plastic or the equivalent of a credit card every week. O’Brien said that it likely gets into the rice as fragmented bits of plastic through the wear and tear of plastic in agricultural equipment. “As the rice becomes contaminated before being …