Sulfites: Danger, Threat or Menace
Allergies, warnings and information about this preservative
Why is there a sulfite warning label on your wine? Is wine safe to drink?
If you have read any good wine labels lately, you may have noticed this cautionary note: "Warning! Contains Sulfites." Used to prevent oxidization, sulfites are a preservative found in many foods, including wines. Since the Food and Drug Administration began requiring this label, there has been some concern and a lot of questions. People wonder when “they” started adding sulfites to the wine. They ask if the sulfites are like pesticides and wonder if sulfites will hurt them.
The answers to those questions are: Since Roman times, no and not likely. Sulphur matches have been burned inside wine casks for over two thousand years. The sulphur dioxide gas that is produced prevents vinegar from forming in the wine residue in the barrel and contaminating the next vintage. Today, a solution of potassium metabisulfate serves the same purpose. This chemical is also used to clean winemaking equipment, and small amounts may be added to the freshly crushed grapes to kill off any wild yeast that have grown on the grape skins or settled into the juice. (Grape juice contains a small proportion of sulfates naturally.) Sulfites also prevent the oxidation of white wines that turns them an unappealing brown color.
Sulfur is occasionally used on the surface of grapes, but its use there is no more toxic than at any other time. The warning label is attached to wine these days only because some very few people, mostly asthmatics, experience a bad reaction to sulfites.
How many people are at risk? The Food and Drug Administration (F.D.A.) estimates that one out of a hundred people is sulfite-sensitive, and that 5 percent of those who have asthma are also at risk of bad reaction to sulfites. Some physicians think that asthmatics who are heavily dependent on steroids are most at risk. "By law, adverse reactions to drugs must be . . .(b)ut with sulfites and other food ingredients, reporting is voluntary so it's difficult to say just how many people may be at risk," cautions FDA consumer safety officer JoAnn Ziyad, Ph.D.
An article by Ruth Papizan on the FDA website explains that scientists have not yet been able to determine what actual amount of these sulfites would be required to bring on an allergic reaction in people with high sensitivities. It continues to say that the "FDA requires food manufacturers and processors to disclose the presence of sulfiting agents in concentrations of at least 10 parts per million, but the threshold may be even lower. The assay used to detect the level of sulfites in food is not sensitive enough to detect amounts less than 10 ppm in all foods (that's 1 part sulfite to 100,000 parts of food--the equivalent of a drop of water in a bathtub) so that's what the regulation has to be based on, explains Ziyad."
If you think that you may be sensitive to sulfites you should consider avoiding many other food products besides wine. Most wines have between 25 and 80 parts per million (ppm) of sulfite: fresh salsa can contain 1500 ppm and pre-cut french fry potatoes as much as 1000ppm. Dried golden raisins and dried apricots can also easily reach 1000ppm.
The FDA also counsels that particularly sensitive or allergic people, including asthmatics, always carry their inhaler and an antihistamine with them, when they go out for meals. In serious cases, where the person has experienced this before, it is advised that they also carry an "injectible epinephrine" pen (EpiPen).
And as always, see your doctor for further information.
To find out more about Sulfites, visit the FDA website.
