You might want to be careful the next time you’re at the liquor store selecting a bottle of red wine. In a new study, the University of Washington tested 65 different red wines and found that all but one of them contained more arsenic than what’s allowed in drinking water.
According to a release from the university, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) allows drinking water to contain up to 10 parts per billion of arsenic. The wines tested, however, contained an average of 24 parts per billion, ranging from 10 to 76 parts per billion. Only one wine contained less than 10. Uh oh.
Of course, the researchers noted that arsenic is found in many other foods, as well, such as apple juice, rice, cereal bars, and even certain baby formulas. A companion study, published alongside this one in the Journal of Environmental Health, concluded that the health risks of arsenic in red wine are dependent upon how much arsenic one ingests overall from a variety of sources. Simply drinking some red wine every now and then isn’t something consumers should get too hung up on—although you should be aware of what’s in your foods and what the risks might be.
Don’t be worried unless you’re a heavy wine drinker
“Unless you are a heavy drinker consuming wine with really high concentrations of arsenic, of which there are only a few, there’s little health threat if that’s the only source of arsenic in your diet,” said University of Washington electrical engineering professor Denise Wilson, who led the two studies.
“But consumers need to look at their diets as a whole. If you are eating a lot of contaminated rice, organic brown rice syrup, seafood, wine, apple juice—all those heavy contributors to arsenic poisoning—you should be concerned, especially pregnant women, kids, and the elderly.”
“My goal is to get people away from asking the question ‘who do we blame?’ and instead offer consumers a better understanding of what they’re ingesting and how they can minimize health risks that emerge from their diets,” Wilson added.
Arsenic can cause various cancers in high concentrations, but it’s nearly impossible to avoid entirely. As water erodes rock that contains arsenic, it gets into water and soil, and subsequently, many of the foods we eat. It’s kind of like mercury in fish—if you’re not eating tuna sandwiches for every meal day in and day out and stirring your coffee with broken thermometers, you don’t have to worry too much.
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Feature Image: Quinn Dombrowski/Flickr
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