Posted on 03/20/2015 12:57:42 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The wines named in the lawsuit are primarily inexpensive white or blush varietals including moscato, pinot grigio and sauvignon blanc.
Many popular, inexpensive brands of wine made and distributed in California, including Trader Joe's famed "Two Buck Chuck," contain illegal and dangerously high levels of poisonous inorganic arsenic, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles.
Plaintiffs Doris Charles, Alvin Jones, Jason Peltier and Jennifer Peltier allege in their complaint that dozens of wineries are violating state law by knowingly producing, marketing and selling arsenic contaminated wine and failing to warn consumers about the potential danger. The suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, is seeking class-action status.
Some of the popular wine brands named in the lawsuit include Franzia, Menage a Trois, Sutter Home, Wine Cube, Charles Shaw, Glen Ellen, Cupcake, Beringer and Vendage. The wines named in the lawsuit are primarily inexpensive white or blush varietals including moscato, pinot grigio and sauvignon blanc. A spokesperson for Trader Joe's said the chain is looking into the allegations.
"We take these concerns seriously and are investigating the matter with several of our wine-producing suppliers," Trader Joe's spokeswoman Rachel Broderick told NBC4. One other defendant named in the lawsuit, Treasury Wines, told CBS News that it was "fully compliant with all relevant federal and state guidelines," according to published reports. "These wineries have long known about the serious health risks their products pose to customers,'' plaintiffs' attorney Brian Kabateck said. "Yet instead of reducing the exposure to acceptable levels, the defendants recklessly engage in a pattern and practice of selling arsenic-tainted wine to California consumers."
The suit seeks unspecified damages and a court order directing the wineries to correct the alleged poor practices.
Arsenic is an odorless, colorless and highly toxic poison known to cause illness and death when ingested. Some of the long-term health effects of arsenic exposure include various types of cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, medical experts say.
The 28 California wineries accused in the lawsuit "produce and market wines that contain dangerously high levels of inorganic arsenic, in some cases up to 500 percent or more than what is considered the maximum acceptable safe daily intake limit," the lawsuit alleges.
Whatabout da grapes?
Are dey assenic?
Maybe it’s from the barrels??
I am so glad to read your response, Grandpa.
I have been dejected all day since hearing this news.
Wine in a box is one of the miracles of modern day science. When I first read about this, being unsure of how to safely dispose of an arsenic laced product, I buried my supply in the backyard. Be back later....
I mix it up but I do drink a lot of the $3 oak leaf wine at walmart to keep my costs down. A bit bland but drinkable. I find I have to spend quite a bit north of $10 to see much improvement over the cheap walmart wine.
I remember that! I believe it was an Airman selling jet engine lubricating fluid or hydraulic fluid as cooking oil.
check out the PDF I posted in post 27.
In Exhibit A there is a list of the wines involved.
OMG! Mad Dog 20 20. Drank it only once but the headache and nausea lasted for days.
Sure they have arsenic in them, in miniscule quantities.
The wines and most liquors also have larger quantities of methyl alcohol, butyl alcohol, amyl alcohol, pyrenes of various types, multi-ring hydrocarbon compounds listed as carcinogenic and yes, formaldehyde in varying amounts. When someone says they got pickled they are not kidding.
These components in varying quantities are what make red wine or scotch more likely than white wine or vodka to give you a hangover and splitting headache.
Yes, there are organic arsenic compounds and many organo-metallic compounds found in herbicides, insecticides, such as arsine, arsenic acid. Another organo-metallic compound was salvarsan which was an organomercury compound which was an early treatment for syphilis before penicillin was introduced.
The only one of these wines we drink is Two Buck Chuck once in Blue Moon.
We drink the cheap red. Its actually pretty good wine. I took it to a dinner party for a joke one night and everybody liked it.
Franzia is that box wine brand. I wonder if all box wines are suspect?
Since you ask
Inorganic arsenic refers to arsenic atoms that occur in their pure, metallic form, or in compounds where they are bonded to other non-carbon elements, such as in arsenic trichloride AsCl3.
Organic arsenic refers to organic (i.e. carbon based) compounds that contain covalently bonded arsenic atoms. One example of this is 4-Hydroxy-3-nitrobenzenearsonic acid.
Organic arsenic occurs in nature and is relatively safe, but it appears that inorganic arsenic, which is much more dangerous, is being added to these white and blush wines as a clarifying agent.
I was wondering the same thing. Maybe they mean organic, as in naturally-occurring, as we think of arsenic and then the inorganic is not naturally occurring. Maybe they’re accusing the vintners of intentionally adding arsenic to their wines?
We were buying Black Point from Sam’s Club last year. For the price, it was great. Good dry wine, for about $9.50 for a 1.5 liter bottle. We bought cases of it. Then, one day, it was gone from the face of the earth. We’re quaffing some Apothic Red right now. It’s about our base level now.
Oddly, Aldi’s has fairly decent wine for low dollars.
Sounds like the higher-priced wine makers want to get their competition out of the way.
By the way, the arsenic limits are a JOKE.
Arsenic in drinking water was limited by the EPA to 10 ppb by Bill Clinton’s executive order I think; one of his last. Our NJ governor Jim Light Loafers McGreavy dropped the New Jersey limit to 5 ppb. Most of the wells around me have more arsenic than that. I had to install an expensive ion exchange system to get below that limit, but the neighbors I told about it don’t seem to be worried.
Like most I drink a lot more water than wine.
Perhaps they should have called them “arsenic compounds”.
” The October 2000 appropriations bill for EPA amended the SDWA, directing EPA to promulgate a final arsenic standard no later than June 22, 2001.”
http://water.epa.gov/lawsregs/rulesregs/sdwa/arsenic/regulations.cfm
That’s what I was thinking.
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