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SCREWCAPS IMPLICATED IN CANCER EPIDEMIC
Date: Mon 30 Apr 2007
A feature story in the influential New Zealand weekly news magazine, the Listener has highlighted a strong link between screwcaps and the soaring rate of breast and prostate cancer in western societies. Also connected is declining Western fertility rates.
Breast cancer is one of the ultimate edocrine disruption consequences, and with breast cancer rates in New Zealand up 98% in the last 50 years thids issue is high on the public health agenda. More so as women are now the principal buyers of wine, and kety targets of the screwcap campaign.
The culprit for the wine industry is the PVCD seal that gives the screwcap closures their oxygen barrier. While this seal has been at the heart of the campaign of technical data promoted by the Screwcap Initiative, those advocating its use have singularly failed to consider the health implication of this material.
The Listener quotes Carnegie Melon Institute chemist, Professor Terry Collins claiming, “People will introduce a chemical technology and think there is no problem, then 10-20 years later they’ll start to see things in the animal record saying there is a problem.” Collins later adds, “We’re talking about the highest imaginable stakes here.”
His explanation of the process of endocrine disruption that is at the cause of the screwcap problem is clear, “So, for example, the mother’s hormones are released into the blood and these chemicals – at exquisitely low concentrations – control what happens in cell development.
“If you do anything to jumble that message, if another chemical comes in that looks like a hormone, or that blocks the way the hormone is picked up by proteins and transported through the blood…there’s an immensely complicated series of events going on. And it’s exquisitely timed. When you get into this area, its bone chilling.”
As the scientific evidence mounts against PVCD and similar plasticized seals, so too will the health campaign to stop drinking wine from screwcapped bottles. With 80% of New Zealand wine now under screwcaps, the exposure of the industry to widespread market rejection is enormous, more so the largest proportion of exports which is Sauvignon Blanc – almost 100% under screwcaps.
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