What Is the Amazon Rice Heavy Metals Lawsuit?

The Amazon rice heavy metals lawsuit is a proposed federal class action accusing Amazon of selling dozens of rice products contaminated with arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury without warning buyers. Filed in May 2025 in Seattle federal court, the case survived Amazon’s motion to dismiss on December 29, 2025, and is now moving into discovery. Consumers who bought the listed brands from Amazon may qualify for the proposed nationwide class.

What the Lawsuit Claims

Ashley Wright and Merriman Blum filed the complaint on May 23, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, case number 2:25-cv-00977. Both say they bought Iberia Basmati 100% Aged Original rice through Amazon. Blum’s purchases go back to December 2020; Wright’s began in December 2024.¹

The core allegation is nondisclosure. According to the complaint, Amazon’s product pages and packaging for the rice at issue said nothing about heavy metals, and the plaintiffs say they would not have paid the same price, or would have bought something else, had they known.¹ The suit brings claims under the Washington Consumer Protection Act along with fraudulent concealment.²

Rice Brands and Products Named

The suit covers a broad slate of brands sold through Amazon. According to plaintiffs’ counsel, the investigation includes:³

365 Whole Foods Market Arborio White Rice, Enriched Calrose Rice Medium Grain, Sushi Rice Short Grain White, Organic Couscous, Organic Italian Farro, and Organic Whole Grain Bulgur Wheat
Amazon Grocery Jasmine Long Grain Rice and Long Grain Brown Rice
RiceSelect Arborio Rice, Brown Texmati, Jasmati Rice, and Sushi Premium Short Grain Rice
Nishiki Medium Grain Rice and Premium Brown Rice
Mahatma Extra Long Enriched Rice and Jasmine Long Grain Rice
Iberia Basmati 100% Aged Original and Jasmine Long Grain Rice
Ben’s Original Ready Rice Long Grain White Original and Whole Grain Brown Rice
Lundberg Family Farms Organic Jasmine Rice, Minute White Rice, Royal Authentic Basmati Rice, Khazana Premium Basmati Rice, and Pride of India Indian White Basmati Rice
Specialty varieties including Andy’s Charleston Gold Rice and Marsh Hen Mill Carolina Gold Rice

What the Testing Found

The complaint leans on a May 2025 report from Healthy Babies Bright Futures, which commissioned Brooks Applied Labs in Seattle to test 145 rice samples bought in 20 U.S. metropolitan areas. Arsenic turned up in every sample. Cadmium showed up in all but one. Lead and mercury each appeared in roughly a third.⁴ More than 25 percent of samples exceeded 100 parts per billion of inorganic arsenic, the FDA’s action level for infant rice cereal.⁵

Numbers rose further when the plaintiffs’ expert tested the specific products they had bought. The original complaint cited arsenic levels reaching 149 ppb and cadmium as high as 105 ppb.¹ After the amended complaint in August 2025, an independent expert reported inorganic arsenic as high as 169 ppb in the plaintiffs’ purchases, above the 100 ppb infant cereal threshold.³

That 100 ppb figure matters because it is the only federal number in the vicinity. The FDA set it for infant rice cereal in 2020 and caps arsenic in bottled water at 10 ppb, but regular bags and boxes of rice sold for home cooking are unregulated.⁶⁵ The FDA’s Closer to Zero initiative has been drafting action levels for arsenic and cadmium in foods for babies and young children, but those had not been finalized as of early 2025.⁷⁸

Where the Case Stands

Amazon moved to dismiss in late July 2025. The company argued that heavy metals in rice are a well-known, decades-old issue that consumers could research themselves, that the plaintiffs never alleged levels exceeding any regulatory limit, and that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shielded it from liability for third-party seller listings.⁹

The plaintiffs filed an amended complaint on August 22, 2025, adding the independent expert’s 169 ppb test results.³

On December 29, 2025, U.S. District Judge James L. Robart denied Amazon’s motion to dismiss. The court rejected Amazon’s argument that the contamination was common knowledge, finding that existing reports like HBBF’s did not establish the information was “widely known and easily available to consumers of Rice Products.” On injury, the court accepted Blum’s price-premium theory: he said he would have bought cheaper alternatives had he known about the contamination and identified specific alternatives, which the court found sufficient under the Washington Consumer Protection Act. The fraudulent concealment claim survived on the same reasoning. The court did reject the plaintiffs’ attempt to add a new affirmative misrepresentation claim through an opposition brief, holding a complaint cannot be amended that way.²

The case is now in discovery. No settlement has been reached, and no class has been certified.

Who Can Join and How

The proposed class covers all U.S. consumers who bought any of the listed rice products from Amazon for personal or household use, with resale purchases excluded.¹⁰ The complaint does not set a specific class-wide time period but references the applicable statute of limitations; the individual plaintiffs’ purchases go back to December 2020.¹

Because the case is still being litigated, there is no claims process yet and no money to collect. Buyers who want to be counted in the investigation can contact plaintiffs’ counsel Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP at 1-888-381-2889 or through the firm’s online form.³ The lead attorneys are Steve W. Berman and Meredith Simons, with Rebecca A. Peterson of co-counsel George Feldman McDonald PLLC.¹¹ Keeping Amazon order records and receipts for the listed products will help if a claims process opens later.

This case is separate from In re Baby Foods Products Liability Litigation (MDL No. 3101) in the Northern District of California, where plaintiffs allege Amazon sold baby food with dangerous heavy metal levels; a judge in that case allowed negligence claims to proceed against Amazon based on the company’s public statements about its product-safety investigations.¹² Rice buyers looking to join the rice case should work through the Hagens Berman intake, not the baby food docket.

1
ClassAction.org. Wright Et Al v. Amazon.com Inc. Class Action Complaint
2
Courthouse News Service. Blum v. Amazon.com USDC Washington Ruling
3
Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP. Amazon Rice Product Heavy Metal Contamination
4
Healthy Babies Bright Futures. What’s in Your Family’s Rice? Arsenic, Cadmium, and Lead in Popular Rice Brands
5
CBS News. Arsenic in Rice: How to Limit Exposure
6
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Arsenic in Food
7
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Closer to Zero: Reducing Childhood Exposure to Contaminants From Foods
8
National Center for Biotechnology Information. Arsenic Exposure and Health Risks From Rice Consumption
9
Yahoo Finance. Amazon.com Seeks End to Lawsuit
10
ClassAction.org. Amazon Class Action Lawsuit Alleges Certain Rice Products Contain Dangerous Levels of Heavy Metals
11
Top Class Actions. Class Action Alleges Amazon’s Rice Products Contain Toxic Metals
12
KBA Attorneys. Amazon Faces Growing Legal Liability in Baby Food Heavy Metals Lawsuit