An Unintended Ingredient May be in Your Wine Glass

It turns out that there may be some unexpected ingredients in your red wine. Scientists have found that phthalate compounds might just be found in a variety of French wines and spirits.

Phthalate compounds are widespread in our environment and present in many plastics. That said, the toxicity of phthalates varies depending on their chemical composition. Some of them, though, have the major potential to act as hormone disruptors. It's therefore not all that surprising that phthalates are regulated on an international level and include those likely to come in contact with food and drink packaging.

In order to see whether packaging could be leeching into wines and spirits, the scientists tested a variety of alcohols. They found that 59 percent of the wines analyzed contained significant quantities of one particular form of phthalate, dibutyl phthalate. A mere 17 percent had no detectable quantity of at least one of the reprotoxicc phthalates.

That's not all the researchers found, though. They also analyzed a variety of materials frequently present in wineries. They discovered that a large number of polymers often contained high quantities of phthalates. In fact, some containers coated in epoxy resin were major sources of contamination. The scientists recommend that these epoxy resin containers should stop being used by the industry.

The findings reveal the importance of assessing what containers are used in the wine industry. In addition, while many of these compounds may not be harmful, it's crucial to assess which ones might be in order to take measures to ensure human health.

The findings are published in the journal Food Additives & Contaminants.