(TDB) - This spring’s class action against the California wine industry over the presence of arsenic in the alcoholic beverage has been tweaked to seek billions of dollars in civil penalties, among other damages.

Los Angeles attorneys Kabateck Brown Kellner LLP filed an amended complaint in California Superior Court on Sept. 16 alleging that California wineries violated the terms of Proposition 65, the California legislation officially known as the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, which seeks to protect consumers from noxious substances (now numbering more than 600) such as wood and leather dust; bracken fern, chloroform and nicotine; alcohol (when consumed in an abusive manner) and arsenic.

Arsenic in both beer and wine is associated with the environment in which the raw materials are grown and in farming and processing supplies. Arsenic is an element of chromium copper arsenate, a preservative of the wooden posts often used in vineyards as well as the diatomaceous earth often used to filter the beverages.

Symptoms of arsenic poisoning include changes to skin pigmentation and various types of lesions.

The lawsuit

While there’s no indication the action’s four plaintiffs—Doris Charles, Alvin Jones, Jason Peltier and Jennifer Peltier—have suffered arsenic poisoning, lab tests of wines from at least 34 vintners detected arsenic levels in some wines that were up to five times the 10 parts per billion (ppb) allowed for drinking water, but no more than half the Canadian standard for arsenic in wine. The U.S. has not set a standard for wine.

 The test results prompted a complaint that California wineries engaged in the “negligent, reckless and/or knowing sale of inorganic arsenic-contaminated wines” and in turn failed to warn California consumers of the risks associated with arsenic.

The complaint names vintners including Sutter Home Winery, The Wine Group Inc. and Treasury Wine Estates Americas Co., among others, and cites 200 anonymous defendants pending the naming of other defendants. (The amended complaint adds no new names to the original list of defendants.)