Brussels – The favorite Red or White bottle of Europe can be delivered with an unwanted ingredient: toxic chemicals that do not decompose naturally.
A new survey has revealed generalized contamination among European wines with trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) – a persistent by -product of PFAs, the group of industrial chemicals widely called “chemicals forever”. None of the wines produced in recent years in 10 EU countries has returned clean. In some bottles, the levels have proved 100 times higher than what is generally measured in drinking water.
The study, published Wednesday by the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Europe, adds a new emergency to calls for rapid elimination of pesticides containing APFs, a family of human manufacturing chemicals designed to withstand heat, water and oil, and to resist rupture in the environment.
Wine production is among the heaviest users of pesticides in European agriculture, in particular fungicides, making vineyards a probable hot spot for chemical accumulation. The grapes are particularly vulnerable to fungal diseases, requiring frequent spraying throughout the growth season, including with certain products containing PFAS compounds.
The researchers found that if the TFA was undetectable in wines collected before 1988, the contamination levels have regularly increased since then, reaching up to 320 micrograms per liter in the bottles of the last three vintages, a level of more than 3,000 times the legal limit of the EU for pesticide residues in groundwater. Study authors connect this increase to the growing use of pesticides based on PFAS and new fluoridal refrigerants over the past decade.
“This is a red flag that should not be ignored,” said Helmut Burtscher-Schaden of Austria NGO Global 2000, which led the research. “The massive accumulation of TFA in plants means that we probably ingest much more of this chemical forever through our food than we supposed previously.”
The report, entitled message of the bottle, analyzed 49 wines, including conventional and biological products. While organic wines tended to have lower TFA concentrations, none was free from contamination. Austrian wines have shown particularly high levels, although researchers have stressed that the problem extends on the continent.
“This is not a local problem, it is a global problem,” warned Michael Müller, professor of pharmaceutical and medicinal chemistry at the University of Freiburg, who conducted an independent study that confirmed similar results. “There are still unused wines left. Even organic farming cannot completely protect this pollution because TFA is now omnipresent in the environment. ”
The results highlight the growing control of PFAs – a large class of fluorinated compounds used in products, non -stick kitchen utensils with fire -fighting and agricultural pesticides. These substances are appreciated for their sustainability, but have proven to be accumulating in the environment and in living organisms, with links with cancer, liver damage and reproductive damage.
Although the risks of long chain APFs have been recognized for a long time, the TFA had until recently been considered relatively benign by regulators and manufacturers. This point of view is now disputed. A study funded by the industry in 2021 as part of the regulation of the chemicals of the EU scope linked exposure to TFA to serious malformations in rabbit fetuses, which prompted regulators to propose the classification of TFA as “toxic to reproduction”.
“It makes even more urgent to act,” said Salomé Rynel, responsible for policies at Pan Europe. She pointed out that by the current EU pesticide rules, metabolites that pose risks for bORNEMBER health should not be detectable in groundwater greater than 0.1 micrograms per liter – a TFA limit regularly exceeds in water and now food.
The time of the report adds political pressures just a few weeks before EU member states vote on the advisability of prohibiting Flutolanil, a PFAS pesticide identified as an important TFA transmitter. Activists argue that the EU must go further, putting pressure on a group’s scale on all PFAS pesticides.
“Voting on Flutolanil is a first test to find out if decision -makers take this threat seriously,” said Roynel. “But ultimately, we must eliminate the entire category of these agricultural chemicals.”
Industry groups are likely to repel, arguing that pesticides based on PFAS remain crucial for crop protection. But Müller thwarts who claims, saying that alternatives are available: “There are substitutes. The idea that these chemicals are essential is simply not true. ”
With the broader PFAS restrictions of the EU currently under discussion, the study on wine injects a new emergency in the debates on how to combat chemical pollution and to protect the food supply of Europe.
“The more we delay, the more the contamination becomes worse,” said Burtscher-Schaden. “And because we are dealing with a chemical forever, each year of inaction locks damage for future generations.”
The European Commission refused to comment on the report.
This story has been updated with a comment without comment from the European Commission.
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