Pesticide residues in wines

A study of 300 French wines from the 2009-10 vintages has found 90 per cent contained pesticide residues. All were below European Union allowable limits, but some samples contained as many as nine different pesticides.

“Even though the individual molecules were below threshold levels of toxicity, there is a worrying lack of research into the accumulation effect, and how the molecules interact with each other,” Pascal Chatonnet of the Excell Laboratory told Decanter.com. [1]

Wine Australia says it reintroduced pesticide testing last year after a hiatus of several years. It tested about 1200 samples last year for the presence of 55 chemicals. “No wine contained more than a small proportion of any permitted maximum residue limit,” said Steve Guy, Wine Australia’s general manager (regulatory advice).

Guy reviewed a batch of 50 samples for Organic Gardener to see how many chemicals were present. “For that batch we found trace amounts of four of the 55 chemicals,” he says. “One wine contained traces of three of those chemicals, albeit in amounts that come nowhere near limits permitted by the Food Standards Code.”

[1]  www.decanter.com/news/wine-news/583644/french-study-finds-pesticide-residues-in-90-of-wines