European
wines face alarming ‘forever chemical’ contamination, new study finds
From Austria
to Spain, not a single wine tested came back clean, exposing the reach of
ultra-persistent chemicals in Europe’s food chain.
April 24,
2025 4:29 am CET
By Bartosz
Brzeziński
BRUSSELS —
Europe’s favorite bottle of red or white may come with an unwanted ingredient:
toxic chemicals that don’t break down naturally.
A new
investigation has found widespread contamination in European wines with
trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) — a persistent byproduct of PFAS, the group of
industrial chemicals widely known as “forever chemicals.” None of the wines
produced in the past few years across 10 EU countries came back clean. In some
bottles, levels were found to be 100 times higher than what is typically
measured in drinking water.
The study,
published on Wednesday by the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Europe, adds fresh
urgency to calls for a rapid phase-out of pesticides containing PFAS, a family
of human-made chemicals designed to withstand heat, water and oil, and to
resist breaking down in the environment.
Wine
production is among the heaviest users of pesticides in European agriculture,
particularly fungicides, making vineyards a likely hotspot for chemical
accumulation. Grapes are especially vulnerable to fungal diseases, requiring
frequent spraying throughout the growing season, including with some products
that contain PFAS compounds.
Researchers
found that while TFA was undetectable in wines harvested before 1988,
contamination levels have steadily increased since then — reaching up to 320
micrograms per liter in bottles from the last three vintages, a level more than
3,000 times the EU’s legal limit for pesticide residues in groundwater. The
study’s authors link this rise to the growing use of PFAS-based pesticides and
newer fluorinated refrigerants over the past decade.
“This is a
red flag that should not be ignored,” said Helmut Burtscher-Schaden of Austrian
NGO Global 2000, who led the research. “The massive accumulation of TFA in
plants means we are likely ingesting far more of this forever chemical through
our food than previously assumed.”
The report,
titled Message from the Bottle, analyzed 49 wines, including both conventional
and organic products. While organic wines tended to have lower TFA
concentrations, none were free of contamination. Wines from Austria showed
particularly high levels, though researchers emphasized that the problem spans
the continent.
“This is not
a local issue, it’s a global one,” warned Michael Müller, professor of
pharmaceutical and medicinal chemistry at the University of Freiburg, who
conducted an independent study that confirmed similar results. “There are no
more uncontaminated wines left. Even organic farming cannot fully shield
against this pollution because TFA is now ubiquitous in the environment.”
The findings
highlight the growing scrutiny on PFAS — a broad class of fluorinated compounds
used in products from non-stick cookware to firefighting foams and agricultural
pesticides. These substances are prized for their durability but have been
shown to accumulate in the environment and in living organisms, with links to
cancer, liver damage and reproductive harm.
While the
risks of long-chain PFAS have long been recognized, TFA had until recently been
considered relatively benign by both regulators and manufacturers. That view is
now being challenged. A 2021 industry-funded study under the EU’s REACH
chemicals regulation linked TFA exposure to severe malformations in rabbit
fetuses, prompting regulators to propose classifying TFA as “toxic to
reproduction.”
“This makes
it all the more urgent to act,” said Salomé Roynel, policy officer at PAN
Europe. She pointed out that under current EU pesticide rules, metabolites that
pose risks to reproductive health should not be detectable in groundwater above
0.1 micrograms per liter — a limit TFA regularly exceeds in both water and,
now, food.
The timing
of the report adds political pressure just weeks before EU member states are
due to vote on whether to ban flutolanil, a PFAS pesticide identified as a
significant TFA emitter. Campaigners argue that the EU must go further, pushing
for a group-wide ban on all PFAS pesticides.
“The vote on
flutolanil is a first test of whether policymakers take this threat seriously,”
Roynel said. “But ultimately, we need to eliminate the entire category of these
chemicals from agriculture.”
Industry
groups are likely to push back, arguing that PFAS-based pesticides remain
crucial for crop protection. But Müller counters that claim, saying
alternatives are available: “There are substitutes. The idea that these
chemicals are essential is simply not true.”
With the
EU’s broader PFAS restrictions currently under discussion, the wine study
injects fresh urgency into debates over how to tackle chemical pollution and
protect Europe’s food supply.
“The more we
delay, the worse the contamination becomes,” said Burtscher-Schaden. “And
because we’re dealing with a forever chemical, every year of inaction locks in
the damage for generations to come.”
The European
Commission declined to comment on the report.
This story
has been updated with a no comment from the European Commission.
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‘Alarming’
increase in levels of forever chemical TFA found in European wines
Wines
produced after 2010 showed steep rise in contamination of trifluoroacetic acid,
analysis finds
Ajit
Niranjan Europe environment correspondent
Wed 23 Apr
2025 10.35 CEST
Levels of a
little-known forever chemical known as TFA in European wines have risen
“alarmingly” in recent decades, according to analysis, prompting fears that
contamination will breach a planetary boundary.
Researchers
from Pesticide Action Network Europe tested 49 bottles of commercial wine to
see how TFA contamination in food and drink had progressed. They found levels
of trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), a breakdown product of long-lasting Pfas
chemicals that carries possible fertility risks, far above those previously
measured in water.
Wines
produced before 1988 showed no trace of TFA, the researchers found, but those
after 2010 showed a steep rise in contamination. Organic and conventional wines
showed a rise in TFA contamination, but levels in organic varieties tended to
be lower.
“The wines
that contained the highest concentration of TFA, on average, were also the
wines we found with the highest amount of pesticide residue,” said Salomé
Roynel from Pesticide Action Network Europe, which has called on the European
Commission and EU member states to ban Pfas pesticides.
The
researchers used 10 Austrian cellar wines from as early as 1974 – before policy
changes they suspect led to the widespread use of precursor chemicals to TFA –
as well as 16 wines bought in Austrian supermarkets from vintages between 2021
and 2024.
When the
initial analysis revealed unexpectedly high levels of TFA contamination, they
asked partners across Europe to contribute samples from their own countries.
The results
from 10 European countries showed no detectable amounts of TFA in old wines; a
“modest increase” in concentrations from 13 micrograms per litre to 21 between
1988 and 2010; and a “sharp rise” thereafter, reaching an average of 121
micrograms per litre in the most recent wines.
Pfas are
chemicals that are widely used in consumer products, some of which have been
shown to have harmful effects on people.
Authorities
have historically not been troubled by potential health effects of TFA
contamination, but recent studies in mammals have suggested it poses risks to
reproductive health. Last year, the German chemical regulator proposed
classifying TFA as toxic to reproduction at the European level.
A study in
October argued the persistent nature of the substance and the growth in
concentrations imply that TFA meets the criteria of a “planetary boundary
threat for novel entities”, with increasing planetary-scale exposure that could
have potential irreversible disruptive impacts on vital Earth system processes.
Hans Peter
Arp, a researcher at Norwegian University of Science and Technology and lead
author of the study, who was not involved in the Pesticide Action Network
report, said that although the new research was only a preliminary screening,
the results were “expected and shocking”.
“Overall
they are consistent with what the scientific community knows about the alarming
rise of TFA in essentially anything we can measure,” he said. “They also
provide further evidence that Pfas-pesticides can be a major source of TFA in
agricultural areas, alongside other sources such as refrigerants and
pharmaceuticals.”
The main
sources of TFA are thought to be fluorinated refrigerants known as F-gases,
which disperse globally, and Pfas pesticides, which are concentrated in
agricultural soil. Concentrations of F-gases rose after the 1987 Montreal
protocol banned ozone-depleting substances such as chlorofluorocarbons, while
Pfas pesticides are thought to have become widespread in Europe in the 1990s.
A study in
November using field data from southern Germany revealed a “significant
increase” in TFA groundwater concentrations when comparing farmland with other
land uses.
Gabriel
Sigmund, a researcher at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and co-author
of the study, who was not involved in the Pesticide Action Network report, said
TFA could not be degraded by natural processes and was very difficult and
costly to remove during water treatment.
For most TFA
precursor pesticides, there is little to no available data on their TFA
formation rates, he added.
“This makes
it very difficult to assess how much TFA formation and emission potential
agricultural soils currently have, as accumulated pesticides can degrade and
release TFA over time,” he said. “So even if we completely stopped the use of
these pesticides now, we have to expect a further increase in TFA
concentrations in our water resources and elsewhere over the next years.”