Paul Chartrand is not dismissive of people with allergies. His point is that sulfites are already covered under other laws and would still appear on any label where they are added. Anyone who wished to know, like yourself, would easily be able to find which wines had them and which did not. The battle over whether these should be covered under “organic” standards as well is a disagreement between two different groups of winemakers, each passionate about their point of view, and has nothing to do with arrogance. No shame here.

The occurrence of inflammatory processes and of cancer in the human respiratory tract is intimately associated. One of the major factors in this is probably the recruitment of and stimulated activity of polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PML) in conjunction with the ability of these cells to convert various carcinogens to their ultimate active metabolites. In this study, we demonstrate that nitrite and sulfite, the major dissolution products of the environmental pollutants nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide in water enhance the metabolic activation of trans-7,8-dihydroxy-7,8-dihydrobenzo[a]pyrene (BP-7,8-dihydrodiol), the proximal carcinogen of benzo[a]pyrene, to trans-7,8-dihydroxy-9,10-epoxy-7,8,9,10-tetrahydrobenzo[a]pyrene (BPDE) and tetraols, the corresponding hydrolysis products, in human PML prestimulated with 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate