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posted by Fnord666 on Friday February 22 2019, @10:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the it-tastes-good-though dept.

A frosty mug of beer or ruby-red glass of wine just wouldn't be the same if the liquid was murky or gritty. That's why producers of alcoholic beverages usually filter them. But in a study appearing in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers report that a material often used as a filter could be transferring heavy metals such as arsenic to beer and wine. They also found ways to possibly limit this contamination.

Chronic dietary exposure to high levels of arsenic, lead and cadmium can endanger health. Therefore, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has set limits on these heavy metals in foods and beverages. Although some studies have reported elevated levels of the contaminants in wine and beer, researchers aren't sure how the metals are ending up in these beverages. Benjamin Redan, Lauren Jackson and colleagues wondered if the diatomaceous earth (DE) used to filter beer and wine could be introducing heavy metals, and if so, whether altering the filtering conditions could reduce the transfer.

Journal Reference:
Benjamin W. Redan, Joseph E. Jablonski, Catherine Halverson, James Jaganathan, Md. Abdul Mabud, Lauren S. Jackson. Factors Affecting Transfer of the Heavy Metals Arsenic, Lead, and Cadmium from Diatomaceous-Earth Filter Aids to Alcoholic Beverages during Laboratory-Scale Filtration. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 2019; DOI: 10.1021/acs.jafc.8b06062


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  • (Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Saturday February 23 2019, @11:31AM

    by fakefuck39 (6620) on Saturday February 23 2019, @11:31AM (#805536)

    and this is exactly the fucking point. there's mercury in tuna too - so what - it does no damage unless you eat a pound of tuna every day.

    "Chronic dietary exposure to high levels of arsenic, lead and cadmium can endanger health."

    maybe if someone has chronic dietary exposure to high levels of alcohol that endangers health a bit more than trace amounts of heavy metals from the filter? seriously, how much metal do you get from filtering 32oz of beer? and if over a week you average over 32oz per day, that's the problem that needs to be fixed.

    I drink like once every couple of years now that I've hit 40, and it's two days of non-stop partying, a liter of some hard stuff, and some blow. russian, so I don't know how to do it another way, but the 3 days I spend in bed afterwards make me not want to do it again for a couple of years. Never once have I woken in some random country from this binge up and been "damn them - damn those heavy metals in my booze"