?The German Brewing industry has more than 1000 members and produces annually 100 million hectoliter beer. Although beer consumption in Germany per capita has been stagnating for many years, it is relatively high (around 100 liter) compared to many other countries. A large part of beer produced is exported. Brewers take a great deal of care to ensure that the beers they produce are entirely safe.  Heavy metals are subject to stringent legislation under German and EU law. In addition to these requirements, contaminants are subject to monitoring organized by the Association of German Beer Brewers, in order to check for any adverse effects on malt or beer quality or other effect on processing before they are accepted for use on malting barley. Hence, a malt monitoring program was started 2011 in Germany to explore  levels of heavy metals, mycotoxins, dioxins and dioxine-like PCBs, and a large number of pesticides. In the present study results for arsenic levels are presented. Analyses revealed that particularly kieselguhr used for filtration of beers may be a significant source of arsenic contamination in beer.

Levels of arsenic in malt, hop, kieselguhr, and beer from Germany

245th National Meeting (2013)

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