Arsenic is deadly serious. And it’s a lethal word to link with popular food brands. So Dispatches’ Rice: How Safe is our Food? (C4, 8pm, 3 November) was always going to be worth a watch.

Even if it was, in essence, just an update on a story that broke a few years ago: that tiny levels of arsenic insidiously live in much of what we eat and drink, but that these levels are disproportionately high in rice.

This poses no immediate threat, but scientists believe that over time those low levels can build up to cause cancer. The young are more vulnerable.

Professor Andrew Meharg, who leads research into the issue, describes the situation as “shocking.” So is it time to bin the basmati and panic?

Dispatches tried hard to get us going. We saw lots of scary rice being tossed around a wok, or grubbily piled high onto messy plates. It’s killer rice! Yet the gentle swells of fear were repeatedly swept away by waves of caveats that left the prosecution floundering. “No scientist says never eat rice or give rice to your children,” was just one example.

The EU has also glacially moved in to propose limits for arsenic in food. Whether they are high enough is up for debate. Dispatches found that 58% of popular rice products exceeded them. Yet the FSA was clear: post regulation, any that do will be withdrawn. Ultimately, for all the hyperbole, it would appear that the unwelcome union of arsenic and rice presents an idly perilous situation that is slowly being brought under control by the proper channels. That might lack drama. But it’s a serious matter.