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A Sobering Christmas Reality: Cocktail of Hazardous Pesticides in Wine has Tripled
(www.thecanary.co)
this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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I hate to break it to wine-drinkers, but alcohol is a group 1 carcinogen. If the risk of Parkinson's due to pesticide use scares you, you won't get away from cancer by going with organic wine.
Even the WHO isn't afraid to say that No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health, so the choice is in your hands.
I think the difference can be drawn in parallel to cigarettes: an unfiltered cigarette is worse than a filtered one for smoking. Both are obviously bad for you, but if you're stacking carcinogens and other health concerns, eventually you'll reach someone's breaking point. I don't think anyone is claiming alcohol is healthy, but I also don't think the response should be "it's already unhealthy, so this isn't won't stop anyone". Every risk associated decision we make adds to the statistics pool for whether we get sick. Mitigating that might actually worry someone enough to switch to a healthier (not healthy) form of alcohol consumption.
I agree that that happens, and I think it's crazy that some people will actually double-down on their use when faced with that reality.
Why even have a "breaking point" for something so totally unnecessary to your happiness and future? Are people so hooked in harmful substances that they simply can't find a less destructive alternative?
I just don't get why people hate good health so much.
Unfortunately, for quite some time, people claimed that wine was healthy because of the antioxidants it contains. That is, until actual science put a "hell no!" to that theory. It turns out that poison, no matter how many antioxidants it has, is still poison.
Can I have a source that filtered cigarettes are "healthier"
I found one source! It was sponsored by the British Tobacco Company, lol.
Nah, it's difficult to find recent data of it - because I get the impression from the papers I have found - the idea was thrown out as a marketing ploy in the 50s and has no significant impact on risk.
Instead it just makes cigarettes worse for the environment - because the filters don't decompose.
I mean it serves a purpose, it's so you don't get pieces of tobacco in your mouth. But other then that, I don't think it does much at all. The amount it obstructs could surely be counteracted by being able to smoke more tobacco by not having a burning ember near your fingers.
This isn't the appropriate way to analyze health policy. If alcohol is bad for you, but we as a society have decided that it is ok for people to poison themselves, then when some unscrupulous capitalists makes it even worse for you, you don't say "who cares it's already bad for you, lol." and then moralize about how if everyone doesn't consume the exact same substances you do, they somehow deserve it.
It is ok for a certain level of toxicity to be permitted, but additional or different unwanted types of toxicity to be a public health concern.
I think you got that wrong.
The idea to share this information is to empower someone to make an informed decision about the potential consequences that their actions could have on their health.
I can't possibly blame someone for not knowing better, as I'm certain that their local wine shop doesn't put cancer warning labels on the bottles.
This also doesn't seem desirable. Societal health isn't achieved by a group of individual decisions. It is created by regulations on how much pesticide should be in consumer goods or how much risk various consumables should pose to an individual.
Caveat emptor isn't a desirable public policy.
However what he showed is that regulators do not reflect the reality of the threat of alcohol consumption on the regulations that are meant to protect the people. Hence the need to inform the individuals who otherwise blindly consider that the current set of regulations leaves no hazardous substances available on the market.
Individuals can work with what they can control, while also pressuring their government to regulate what they can't.
Can you avoid all pesticides? No.
Can you avoid all alcoholic beverages? Yes.
Edit: clarification
The thing about carcinogenic compounds, which are also toxins, is it's entirely about dosage. Pesticides being toxins and carcinogens makes the comparison nearly apples to apples with ethanol. The human body can handle a lot more ethanol than pesticides, as the latter are often either highly toxic or highly hazardous. If ethanol was even in the same ballpark as pesticides, the history surrounding its consumption would look quite unfamiliar. With ethanol concentration remaining overall the same, yet the pesticide concentration increasing as well as incorporating additional pesticides, the chances of ethanol resulting in uncontrolled cell growth is becoming a secondary issue. As the article identified, “50% fall under the category of ‘highly hazardous pesticides.’ Furthermore, 45 of these are carcinogens, 25 act as endocrine disruptors, impacting hormone systems and leading to birth defects, developmental disorders, and infertility.” Not only are many of these pesticides highly hazardous and carcinogenic, but the fact some are endocrine disruptors is quite distressing. Microplastics cause many issues within the body's endocrine system, and this is already a massive problem. Now there's another avenue facilitating interference with the body's communication between different organs/tissues. Basically, cancer from ethanol consumption shouldn't be much of a concern. Especially when issues from ingesting even small quantities of highly hazardous pesticides include neurological damage, reproductive disorders, difficulty breathing, immunosuppression, increased risk of cancer, seizures, and even death.
Sources:
Agreed. The scientific consensus is that there is no safe lower limit for alcohol.
To clarify, synthetic pesticides are quite harmful to humans and animals. Biopesticides, found naturally in many plant species, are quite safe by comparison. And plants containing natural toxins (i.e. fiddleheads, red kidney beans, stone fruits, etc.) are quite safe to consume when properly prepared.
Indeed, you are still benefiting from the consumption of those fruits and vegetables.
If you can, stay away from man-made pesticides in all food sources.
My point was that going with organic wine (to not have as many pesticides) won't stop wine from being harmful at any dose.
Well.... I'm sure nobody agrees with that. Alcohol consumption is a leading preventable cause of cancer death in U.S, with that study concluding that "there is no safe threshold for alcohol and cancer risk.".
There are no biopesticides which fall into the highly hazardous category, so those aren't very applicable here. While organic options may help side step this problem, thats only an option for those able to spend more during the holidays, which is becoming increasingly rare. As far as the cancer from ethanol quote, that's just half the full thought. The following sentence highlights why it's without question the lesser of the two evils.