The researchers say that heavy metals contamination is linked to neurological problems like Parkinson’s disease and can also cause oxidative stress that leads to chronic inflammatory disease and cancer.

Declan Naughton, who led the study, says: “To determine the Target Hazard Quotients(THQ) for these wines, we used those reports of concentrations of metals in wines that originated from 16 countries and we found that many of wines provided very high THQ values that is quite alarming.”

Among the wines collected from Austria, Portugal, Spain, Hungary, Czech Republic, Serbia, Argentina, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Slovakia, Macedonia and Greece only countries had wines without any hazard from heavy metals.

The analysis showed that wines from Argentina, Brazil and Italy had 1.0 or below THQ values.

The study has been published in the online edition of Chemistry Central Journal in Oct. 30 issue.

Naughton and colleague used THQ formula for the study that was developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to know about the heavy metals in wines. These heavy metals include copper, manganese, zinc, nickel, vanadium, lead and chromium.