Tag: drink

Brave New Warmer World for Vintners

  • Drier areas will find a warmer climate makes things tougher, but other areas might benefit (Photo by Patrick Tregenza, courtesy of the USDA Agricultural Research Service)

Farmers are starting to see signs
of climate change. One crop that’s more
susceptible to change than most is the wine
grape. Lester Graham reports not everybody
thinks that’s bad:

Transcript

Farmers are starting to see signs
of climate change. One crop that’s more
susceptible to change than most is the wine
grape. Lester Graham reports not everybody
thinks that’s bad:

Vineyards are likely to be especially affected by climate change.

Gregory Jones is a research climatologist at Southern Oregon University. He says
growing grapes for wine is always a tricky business, and climate change will make it
tricker.

Gregory Jones: “Pinot noir is produced in a cool climate and cabernet sauvignon in
a warm climate, and you cannot produce one in the other without having it affect
style, quality and flavor.”

So, grape growers across the nation are watching things closely. Drier areas will
find it tougher, but other areas actually might benefit.

Bill Hendricks is showing me his vines. Pinot grigio, cabernet franc, cabernet
sauvignon.

Hendricks says grape growers in central Michigan – where he is, Virginia, Missouri, California – they’re all beginning to see changes.

“They see it coming. You know, the record year of ’99—what, 2001 I also think.
Like, last year we were about ten days above norm. This year we’re four days above
norm.”

As the climate changes, some vineyards might have to switch to different varietals –
different kinds of grapes.

(sound of the peninsula)

More than 200 miles northwest of Hendrick’s vineyards, on a peninsula jutting into Lake Michigan, there’s a wine
growing area called Leelanau. It’s known for its white wines. It’s always been a little too
cool for red wine grapes, but things are changing.

Chalie Edson is the vintner at Bel Lago Vineyard and Winery. He says he doesn’t
want to call the warmer seasons global warming.

“Not being a climatologist, I’m going to answer
‘no.’ It’s tempting to say ‘Yes, yes. It’s getting warmer.’ Whether that translates into
overall increase of warmth in expected temperatures in the years to come, I think that’s still
somewhat speculative. But, I sort of hope that it happens.”

Yep, you heard right. Global warming would be beneficial to Edson. You might be
wondering, ‘why?’ Well, because this climate is better suited to white wines, and red wines
sell better.

“People come to northern
Michigan just like they come to any other winemaking region and they ask for reds.
We’ve made some really great progress in the last ten years in making reds as the
winemakers learn better how to utilize the fruit that we have here. And we’ve also
had a string of really warm vintages.”

But right now, Leelanua County is known for its white wines.

Climatologist, Gregory Jones says there’s a real question whether wine
consumers will be able to keep up with the changes.

“If you’re in a historic region that’s always produced pinot noir and all of a sudden
you really can’t do that, you know, because the climate’s changed, then you’re going
to grow merlot and you’re going to do it very well in that same place, but the
consumer has to be retrained.”

And so Burgandy wines might not come from Burgandy in the future, and wine
drinkers will have to try to keep up.

(sound of bottles clinking and price-tag gun clicking)

At Plum Market in Ann Arbor, Michigan, wine buyer Rod Johnson says climate
change has been a good thing for wine – so far.

“So, places like Michigan which traditionally have been too cold is suddenly seeing a
lot of different wines like pinot grigio and riesling, even pinot noir being able to be
grown here. So that’s beneficial. Same thing in Germany. They’ve had great year
after great year after great year in Germany where it used to be they were too cold.
When we get to the point that we’re hurting the wine business, I think there will be a
lot more hurt going elsewhere in the world.”

So if those dry California areas or Mediterranean areas get too warm and too dry for
wine grapes, that’ll probably be the least of their worries.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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15th ANNIVERSARY OF WATER CRISIS

  • Dr. Ian Gilson and nurse Mary Busalacchi treated several of the AIDS patients who died during the cryptosporidium outbreak in Milwaukee. (Photo by Erin Toner)

Fifteen years ago, 400,000
people got sick and more than 100 died
from contaminated drinking water. It’s
still the biggest outbreak of waterborne
disease ever in the United States. It
happened because a parasite got into the
water supply in Milwaukee. Since then,
there have been major changes in water
systems across the nation. Erin Toner
reports:

Transcript

Fifteen years ago, 400,000
people got sick and more than 100 died
from contaminated drinking water. It’s
still the biggest outbreak of waterborne
disease ever in the United States. It
happened because a parasite got into the
water supply in Milwaukee. Since then,
there have been major changes in water
systems across the nation. Erin Toner
reports:

Dr. Ian Gilson has been treating AIDS patients for 25 years. He says in all that time,
nothing’s been as bad as 1993 when Milwaukee’s drinking water was contaminated with
a parasite called cryptosporidium.

“We began to get reports of some of our patients having diarrhea that didn’t stop and we
had patients with weird stuff like an ulcer that was not related to acid, severe gall bladder
disease without stones. Ultimately by the time it was called a waterborne epidemic we
knew we had a big problem on our hands.”

Healthy people who drank the water, or brushed their teeth with it, or ate food that was
washed in it, had severe vomiting and diarrhea. But people with weak immune systems,
like those HIV with AIDS, couldn’t fight the parasite. And there weren’t good AIDS
drugs back then, so the patients just deteriorated.

“I distinctly remember several patients saying if you can’t get me over this let’s just be
done with this. One guy who was suffering terribly, we couldn’t seem to get him enough
morphine. And I ordered what I thought was a fatal dose of morphine because I thought
that was the only thing that was going to help him. And it actually relieved his pain.”

When it was all over, cryptosporidium killed 103 people with HIV and AIDS. Even after
15 years, the source of the parasite is still a mystery.

“The cause is not known and may never be known. There does not seem to be any
obvious explanation.”

Carrie Lewis is superintendent of Milwaukee Water Works. She says at the time of the
outbreak, the city pumped in water through an intake pipe about a mile off shore in Lake
Michigan.

The prevailing theory is that sewage overflows contaminated water in the bay, and that
the water was pushed toward the intake pipe and entered the treatment plant.

Lewis doesn’t buy it.

She says if human sewage was the source, people would have had to be sick to excrete
the parasite, and there’s no evidence of that. Some also speculate that cow manure
contaminated area rivers, but Lewis says regular testing in the watershed rarely finds
traces of cryptosporidium.

Lewis says she has no clue what happened, and she’s OK with that. She says what’s
important is what’s changed since then. Lewis says water testing at the time of the
outbreak amounted to taking a couple of samples a day – and that was considered good.

“Today we have hundreds of instruments testing the water every single second for all
sorts of different parameters, so the 15 years that’s gone by it’s a lifetime.”

The cryptosporidium outbreak so damaged Milwaukee’s psyche that people were willing
to do just about anything to make the water safe again. The city spent $90 million to
extend the intake pipe farther out in Lake Michigan. The filters at purification plants were
updated. And now the water is treated with ozone, which kills cryptosporidium.

What happened in Milwaukee caused changes around the country.

New federal regulations required water systems to test for the parasite and safeguard
against it. A drug was licensed to treat the disease.

Michael Beach is associate director for healthy water at the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention. He says today people should have a lot of confidence when they turn on
their tap.

“Those types of outbreaks have virtually disappeared from the tracking system.”

Many water experts say municipal drinking water in this country is now the safest in the
world. They say the legacy of the Milwaukee outbreak is that water utilities are no longer
just managing a system of pipes and water mains – they’re in the business of protecting
public health.

For The Environment Report, I’m Erin Toner.

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Interview: ‘Bottlemania’

  • Author Elizabeth Royte encourages people to buy reusable water bottles instead of disposable. Just make sure your water bottle doesn't have BPA in it like this one! (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

We buy a lot of bottled water.
Globally, sales are more than 60-billion
dollars a year. Elizabeth Royte just wrote
a new book about the whole bottled water
phenomenon. It’s called ‘Bottlemania’.
The Environment Report’s Lester Graham
asked her how we got to where we’re carrying
a plastic bottle of water with us at all times:

Transcript

We buy a lot of bottled water.
Globally, sales are more than 60-billion
dollars a year. Elizabeth Royte just wrote
a new book about the whole bottled water
phenomenon. It’s called ‘Bottlemania’.
The Environment Report’s Lester Graham
asked her how we got to where we’re carrying
a plastic bottle of water with us at all times:

Elizabeth Royte: “Because of hundreds of millions of dollars spent on advertising telling us that
bottled water is pure and natural, will make us look better, and make us more attractive to the
opposite sex. If you’re smart, you’ll drink bottled water.”

Lester Graham: (laughs) “Okay, so at $1.39 a pint, it sounds like I’m paying for a lot of advertising
and not much water.”

Royte: (laughs) “Yeah. You’re paying for advertising, you’re paying for lawyers, you’re paying for
PR flacks, you’re paying for the right to extract water from communities where many people might
not. So there’s a lot of legal battles going on over it, so some of your money may be going toward
that. You’ll be doing your pocketbook and the environment a big favor by just getting a good
refillable, reusable, washable bottle and filling it up with good old tap water.”

Graham: “A lot of bottled water comes from public water supplies. Dasani and Aquafina, from
Coke and Pepsi, come from public water supplies, and, as you say in ‘Bottlemania’, ‘they filter the
bejesus out of it’. Other water comes from natural springs, or glaciers, or pure mountain rivers –
doesn’t that make it better?”

Royte: “Well, you’ve hit on it, because that’s what they’re trading on and sometimes they charge a
bit more from that. They do say it is a natural product – it’s coming from the Earth. Those other
brands, Aquafina and Dasani, do start from municipal water supplies, they’re very filtered. And if
you don’t want to have minerals in your water, then you should aim for one of those. Or, get a
reverse-osmosis filter and install it under your sink and you’ll get the same thing, more or less.”

Graham: “Okay, so I’ve been buying bottled water by the case, let’s say. You want me to stop
buying bottled water because there’s fuel used in it, there’s petroleum used in the plastic, I’m
paying more than I should have to for water. What should I do?”

Royte: “You shouldn’t buy bottled water for bad reasons. You should educate yourself. You
should find out what’s going on upstream, what’s going on in your watershed, what sort of industry,
agriculture, development. Read your consumer confidence report. Know the utility is found in the
water, then go a step further, and order up some of your own tests so you can find out what’s in the
pipes in your house. Because the utility is responsible for the quality of the water only until it gets
to your service lines.”

Graham: “But that’s a lot of work. It’s easier to buy a bottle of water.”

Royte: (laughs) “It’s easier in the short run, but it’s going to hurt you financially in the long run, and
its contributing to climate change. That’s the carbon footprint of the transportation, the making the
bottles, the landfills, the incinerator, the litter – it goes on and on and on. It is a little bit of money
up front. But it’s only up front. You’ll get that reusable bottle, you might have to get a filter, but
again, you’re going to save money buying this filter and maintaining it over relying only on bottled
water.”

Graham: “So, let’s say you go to lunch or go to meet someone for coffee and your friend comes in
with a plastic bottle of water they bought at a local store. Do you resist the urge to say, ‘hey, do
you know?’ or do you go ahead and let them have it. Let me hear your elevator speech to your
friend.”

Royte: (laughs) “I don’t have friends like that.” (laughs) “All my friends have refillable, reusable
bottles.” (laughs) “No, yeah, I sometimes do resist the urge. I do see people in their cars with
these bottles and I don’t say anything because I want to keep them as friends. But I try to model
good behavior, and they see me filling up my bottle, and I hope some of that rubs off on them.”

Elizabeth Royte is the
author of ‘Bottlemania: How Water Went On Sale
And Why We Bought It’. She spoke with Lester Graham.

Related Links

Perchlorate, Pregnancy, and Politics

  • Perchlorate is a chemical in rocket fuel that has been found in some drinking water supplies. It’s been linked to thyroid problems in pregnant women and babies. (Photo courtesy of the CDC)

Critics of the Environmental Protection
Agency say the agency is putting pregnant women
and children at risk. Rebecca Williams reports
the controversy centers on a chemical that’s found
in some drinking water supplies:

Transcript

Critics of the Environmental Protection
Agency say the agency is putting pregnant women
and children at risk. Rebecca Williams reports
the controversy centers on a chemical that’s found
in some drinking water supplies:

Perchlorate is a chemical in rocket fuel. It’s been linked to thyroid problems in
pregnant women and babies. It’s been found in milk, and lettuce and water
supplies from coast to coast.

But the Environmental Protection Agency has not set a safety standard for the
chemical in drinking water. Recently, a draft document obtained by the press
stated that EPA does not intend to set that standard.

The Washington Post reported that White House officials edited the EPA
document. And took out references to some studies that linked perchlorate to
thyroid problems.

Senator Barbara Boxer is a Democrat from California. She says she’s troubled
by this news.

“To me it’s just an immoral decision that EPA has made not to set forth a
standard for perchlorate. Perchlorate interferes with production of hormones
that are needed for development of the brain and the nervous system. This is
really a dangerous, dangerous chemical.”

Boxer endorsed a bill that would force EPA to set a standard.

The EPA says, ‘whoa, hang on a minute, this is just a draft.’

In a statement sent to The Environment Report, EPA assistant administrator
Benjamin Grumbles says quote.

“We know perchlorate in drinking water presents some degree of risk and
we’re committed to working with states and scientists to ensure public health is
protected.”

Grumbles says the agency will release its draft decision soon. That version will
be open to public comment.

But some critics say politics is shaping this entire decision.

Perchlorate has been used for decades by the defense industry. The chemical’s
used for making and firing rockets and missiles.

John Stephenson is with the Government Accountability Office. It’s the federal
agency that acts as a watchdog.

“Setting a standard is important because, in the Department of Defense’s case,
they don’t clean up anything for which there is no standard.”

Stephenson says his watchdog agency is bothered by some recent changes at
the EPA. This spring, the EPA changed its chemical review process. It’s used
to decide how dangerous a given chemical might be.

Stephenson says now, the Department of Defense and the White House can
keep their comments private.

“And EPA can receive comments behind closed doors in what amounts to a
black box. So let’s say the Department of Defense offers up some new
research on perchlorate that they think is compelling reason why the standards
should be set or shouldn’t be set at a certain level but nobody else in the
scientific community can see what this is until the end of the process.”

Stephenson says he’s lost confidence in the EPA to change this.

The GAO is urging Congress to step in and bring more light to the process
that’s supposed to keep the public safe.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

From the Toilet to the Tap

  • Inside the Reverse Osmosis building for the Groundwater Replenishment System in Orange County, California. (Photo courtesy of Orange County Water District)

Treated sewage water has been used to water
lawns and flush toilets before. But now the world’s
largest “toilet-to-tap” system has gone online. Mark
Brush reports on the new water treatment system:

Transcript

Treated sewage water has been used to water
lawns and flush toilets before. But now the world’s
largest “toilet-to-tap” system has gone online. Mark
Brush reports on the new water treatment system:

You think flush the toilet and it’s gone, right?

Well… that’s not happening in the O.C.

In Orange County California, the water people flush from their homes and businesses will
eventually come back to their taps.

The treated sewage water is sent to a water purification plant. It’s treated some more and
then pumped back into the aquifers where the county gets its water supply.

Mike Wehner is with the Orange County Water District. He says, at first, people kind of
held their nose at the idea:

“The biggest concern is kind of a general yuck-factor. It’s just, ‘You mean sewage? We’re
not going to drink that.’ But after people develop an understanding of the kind of
treatment processes we’re talking about, the yuck-factor diminishes, it goes away.”

Wehner says when the half billion dollar system is at its peak; it will add 70 million
gallons of recycled water a day to the areas drinking water supply.

For the Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

Trash Burning Can Threaten Human Health

  • Burning trash smells bad and it can create the conditions necessary to produce dioxin. If livestock are exposed to that dioxin, it can get into the meat and milk we consume, creating health risks. (Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance)

For most of us, getting rid of the garbage is as simple as setting it at the curb. But not everyone can get garbage pick-up. So, instead, they burn their trash. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports… that choice could be affecting your health:

Transcript

For most of us, getting rid of the garbage is as simple as setting it at the
curb, but not everyone can get garbage pick-up. So, instead, they burn
their trash. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
reports… that choice could be affecting your health:


(Sound of garbage trucks)


It’s not been that long ago that people everywhere but in the largest cities
burned their trash in a barrel or pit in the backyard. That’s not as often
the case these days. Garbage trucks make their appointed rounds in
cities, small towns, and in some rural areas, but they don’t pick up
Everywhere, or if they do offer service, it’s much more expensive
because the pick-up is so far out in the country.


Roger Booth lives in a rural area in southwestern Illinois. He says
garbage pick-up is not an option for him.


“Well, we burn it and then bury the ashes and things. We don’t have a
good way to dispose of it any other method. The cost of having pick up
arranged is prohibitive.”


He burns his garbage in the backyard. Booth separates bottles and tin
cans from the rest of the garbage so that he doesn’t end up with broken
glass and rusty cans scattered around.


A lot of people don’t do that much. They burn everything in a barrel and
then dump the ashes and scrap in a gully… or just burn everything in a
gully or ditch. Booth says that’s the way most folks take care of the
garbage in the area. No one talks about the smoke or fumes put off by
the burning.


“I haven’t ever thought much about that. So, I don’t suppose that I have
any real concerns at this moment. I don’t think I’m doing anything
different than most people.”


And that’s what many people who burn their garbage say.


A survey conducted by the Zenith Research Group found that people in
areas of Wisconsin and Minnesota who didn’t have regular garbage
collection believe burning is a viable option to get rid of their household
and yard waste. Nearly 45-percent of them indicated it was
“convenient,” which the researchers interpreted to mean that even if
garbage pick-up were available, the residents might find more convenient
to keep burning their garbage.


While some cities and more densely populated areas have restricted
backyard burning… state governments in all but a handful of states in
New England and the state of California have been reluctant to put a lot
of restrictions on burning barrels.


But backyard burning can be more than just a stinky nuisance. Burning
garbage can bring together all the conditions necessary to produce
dioxin. Dioxin is a catch-all term that includes several toxic compounds.
The extent of their impact on human health is not completely know, but
they’re considered to be very dangerous to human health in the tiniest
amounts.


Since most of the backyard burning is done in rural areas, livestock are
exposed to dioxin and it gets into the meat and milk that we consume.


John Giesy is with the National Food Safety and Toxicology Center at
Michigan State University. He says as people burn garbage, the dioxins
are emitted in the fumes and smoke…


“So, when they fall out onto the ground or onto the grass, then animals
eat those plants and it becomes part of their diet, and ultimately it’s
accumulated into the animal and it’s stored as fat. Now, particularly with
dairy cattle, one of the concerns about being exposed to dioxins is that
then when they’re producing milk, milk has fat it in, it has butter fat in it,
and the dioxins go along with that.”


So, every time we drink milk, snack on cheese, or eat a hamburger, we
risk getting a small dose of dioxin. Beyond that, vegetables from a
farmer’s garden, if not properly washed, could be coated with dioxins,
and even a miniscule amount of dioxin is risky.


John Giesy says chemical manufacturing plants and other sources of
man-made dioxin have been cleaned up. Now, backyard burning is the
biggest source of dioxins produced by humans.


“So, now as we continue to strive to reduce the amount of dioxins in the
environment and in our food, this is one place where we can make an
impact.”


“That’s the concern. That’s the concern, is that it’s the largest remaining
source of produced dioxin.”


Dan Hopkins is with the Environmental Protection Agency. He says,
collectively, backyard burning produces 50 times the amount of dioxin as
all the large and medium sized incinerators across the nation combined.
That’s because the incinerators burn hot enough to destroy dioxins and
have pollution control devices to limit emissions. Backyard burning
doesn’t get nearly that hot and the smoke and fumes spread unchecked.


The EPA wants communities to take the problem of backyard burning
seriously. It wants state and local governments to do more to make
people aware that backyard burning is contaminating our food and
encourage them to find other ways to get rid of their garbage.


“(It) probably won’t be a one-size-fits-all solution, but by exchanging
successful efforts that other communities have had, we should be able to
help communities fashion approaches that have a high probability of
success.”


But public education efforts are expensive, and often they don’t reach the
people who most need to hear them. The EPA is not optimistic that it
will see everyone stop burning their garbage. It’s not even a goal. The
agency is just hoping enough people will find other ways to get rid of
their trash that the overall dioxin level in food is reduced.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Glassing Bottled Water’s Image

  • While your bottle of water may depict this... (Photo by Ian Britton)

Over the past ten years, sales of bottled water have tripled. There’s a huge thirst for water that’s pure, clean and conveniently packaged. As part of the ongoing series, “Your Choice, Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Victoria Fenner takes a look at why we’re turning to bottled water and whether it’s worth the price:

Transcript

Over the past ten years, sales of bottled water have tripled. There’s
a huge thirst for water that’s pure, clean and conveniently packaged.
As part of the ongoing series, “Your Choice, Your Planet,” the Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Victoria Fenner takes a look at why we’re
turning to bottled water and whether it’s worth the price:


On a warm sunny day, it’s easy to believe that sales of bottled water
are skyrocketing. People everywhere in this waterfront park in
Toronto are carrying plastic water bottles labeled with pictures of
glaciers and mountains. With a price tag of anywhere from fifty
cents to over a dollar a bottle, that’s a lot of profit flowing to
the companies that sell it.


But Catherine Crockett and Colin Hinz are packing water the old-
fashioned way. They don’t buy bottled water. Instead, they fill up
their own bottle before they leave home and refill it at the drinking
fountain.


Crockett: “Well, it’s cheaper and as an environmentalist, I’d rather
refill a container than waste a lot of money on pre-filled stuff that
isn’t necessarily any better than Toronto tap water. What’s the
point in paying a dollar for a disposable bottle full of what’s
probably filtered tap water anyway?”


Hinz: “Personally I think a lot of what’s behind bottled water is
marketing and I don’t really buy into that very well.”


Colin Hinz’s suspicions are shared by Paul Muldoon, the Executive
Director of the Canadian Environmental Law Association. His
organization has done a lot of research on water issues. He says the
reality often doesn’t live up to the image that companies have tried
to cultivate.


“There’s no doubt in my mind that when a person buys bottled water at
the cost they pay for it, they’re expecting some sort of pristine 200
year-old water that’s from some mountain range that’s never
been touched or explored by humans, and that the sip of water they’re
getting is water that is so pure that it’s never seen the infringement
of modern society. In reality, pollution’s everywhere and there are
very few sources of water that has been untouched by human intervention
in some way, shape or form.”


Environmentalists say it’s not always clear what you’re getting when
you look at the label on an average bottle of water. First of all,
it’s hard to tell by looking at the label what the source of the
water is. In many cases, it comes from rural areas just outside of
major cities. It can even be ordinary tap water which has been
refiltered. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does set maximum
levels of contaminants, and some labeling requirements as well. But
they don’t regulate water which is bottled and sold in the same
state. That’s one of the reasons critics of the bottled water
industry say the standards for tap water are at least as stringent,
and often even higher than for packaged water.


Lynda Lukasic is Executive Director with Environment Hamilton, an
environmental advocacy group in Ontario. She still has confidence in
tap water, despite the fact that the water supply in a neighborhood
in Hamilton was recently shut down because of the threat of
contamination.


“I think we’d all be better to focus on ‘what is the water
supply like in the place that we’re in?’ and ensuring that we’re
offering people who live in communities safe, affordable sources of
drinking water. And going the route of bottled water does a few
things. It creates problems in exporting bottled water out of
certain watersheds when maybe that’s not what we want to see
happening. But there’s also a price tag attached to bottled water.”


Paul Muldoon of the Canadian Environmental Law Association says there
are other costs associated with bottled water that can’t be measured
in dollars.


“Some of the costs of bottled water include the transportation of water
itself, and certainly there’s local impacts. There are many residents
who are now neighbors to water facilities with truck traffic and all
that kind of stuff. There’s also the issue of bottling itself. You’ve
now got containers, hundreds of thousands… millions of them probably.
So there is the whole notion of cost, which have to be dealt with and
put into the equation.”


There are many things to take into account when you pick up a bottle
of water. You can think about the cost and whether or not there are
better ways of spending your dollar. You might think about
convenience. And whether the added convenience is worth the price. Ask
yourself what you’re really getting. Read the label to find out
where the water comes from and consider whether it’s any better than
what comes out of your tap.


The bottom line is, be an informed consumer. And keep in mind that
the choices aren’t as crystal clear as the kind of water you want to
drink.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Victoria Fenner.

Related Links

Natural Cork Makers Unite

For hundreds of years, wine-makers have used natural cork – made
from tree bark – to seal their bottles. But natural corks are… well,
natural.
And sometimes they harbor a mold that can cause wine to go bad. Some
wine-makers are switching to synthetic corks – made of plastic – as a
solution. But right now, they only make up about one-percent of the
market. Nevertheless, natural cork manufacturers are taking action.
The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Wendy Nelson reports: