The latest media-enabled public health scare this past week was a widely circulated report alleging dangerous levels of arsenic in cheap wine.
Is there arsenic in wine? Probably; most likely. Is it dangerous? Most likely not. EPA levels for arsenic in water have in the past been much higher than they are now.
Arsenic is naturally occurring in the environment; studies of water in Fallon found levels of arsenic in municipal supplies and very high levels in domestic wells. People had been drinking this water for decades. (The municipal water is now treated for arsenic.)
In regards to the latest issue, NPR has a good breakdown of the wine situation. (Snopes also writes about it.) Of particular note:
All of them tested below the maximum allowable limit for arsenic. In fact, 90 percent of the California wines tested below 10 parts per billion, and 99 percent had levels of 25 ppb or lower.
There are experts who’ve raised a red flag about the concentrations of arsenic detected in some California wines. “Arsenic is highly toxic,” Allan Smith, director of the Arsenic Health Effects research program at the University of California, Berkeley, told CBS News. And, over time, that can be be deadly.
But, as many scientists point out, it’s the overall exposure that determines the potential health effects.
“Whenever you’re talking about toxicity, it’s the dose that makes the poison,” Susan Ebeler, a professor and chemist in the Foods For Health Institute at the University of California, Davis, says.
As Health Canada notes, “Studies of populations in Asia have associated the development of skin lesions, various cancers and neurotoxicity … with chronic ingestion of drinking water containing elevated concentrations of arsenic ranging from 10 to 100 times greater than the current Canadian Drinking Water Quality Guideline for arsenic,” or 10 ppb.
These exposures are also typically much higher than what Americans are exposed to through water, food or wine.
While there is certainly some risk involved with consuming arsenic, the chance of being negatively impacted from drinking wine would come most likely from consuming gross amounts of wine to reach levels of arsenic that are dangerous.
Drink up. And don’t trust fear-mongering news media reports.
