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California Bypasses Science To Label Coffee a Carcinogen (undark.org)
travers_r writes: Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle affirmed last week that all coffee sold in California must come with a warning label stating that chemicals in coffee (acrylamide, a substance created naturally during the brewing process) are known to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. But judges, journalists, and environmental advocates fail to recognize the critical difference between probably and certainly, which fuels the inaccurate belief that cancer is mostly caused by things in the environment. From a report at Undark: "IARC is one of the leading scientific bodies in the world, and it is also one of several expert panels on which California relies for scientific opinions in such cases. The IARC has concluded that while there is sufficient evidence to consider acrylamide carcinogenic in experimental animals, there is insufficient evidence for carcinogenicity in humans. Therefore, its overall evaluation is that 'acrylamide is probably carcinogenic to humans.'
[...]
Leading experts, in fact, believe that roughly two-thirds of all cancers are the result of mutations to DNA that are caused by natural bodily processes, not exposure to environmental chemicals. This is quite the opposite of the prevailing belief among the public that most cancers are caused by exogenous substances imposed on us by the products and technologies of the modern world. It's this belief -- this fear -- that prompted voters to pass Proposition 65 in 1986. It was a time when fear of hazardous waste and industrial chemicals was high, when chemophobia -- a blanket fear of anything having to do with the word 'chemicals' -- was being seared into the public's mind."
[...]
Leading experts, in fact, believe that roughly two-thirds of all cancers are the result of mutations to DNA that are caused by natural bodily processes, not exposure to environmental chemicals. This is quite the opposite of the prevailing belief among the public that most cancers are caused by exogenous substances imposed on us by the products and technologies of the modern world. It's this belief -- this fear -- that prompted voters to pass Proposition 65 in 1986. It was a time when fear of hazardous waste and industrial chemicals was high, when chemophobia -- a blanket fear of anything having to do with the word 'chemicals' -- was being seared into the public's mind."
I thought we'd already settled that the largest statistically significant link to throat cancer turned out to be more about the temperature of the drinks than what was in them?
The story will be completely different if they discover that marijuana is a carcinogen. No big company to blame for that one.
Hardcore Liberal here, California may as well jump off the edge of the world and leave the rest of us alone. This is the most ridiculous decisions I have read about in the last, um, well, last week (Trump trumps them all) ...but this one is pretty bad.
acrylamide is naturally generated in many, many foods during cooking when food "browns." We would have to label dozens and dozens of foods as unsafe to be fair then.
Second, innumerable things may cause cancer, but they aren't anywhere close to being equal. Some things would only increase cancer risks by 0.001% and things such as smoking would be orders of magnitude more risky. That doesn't mean everything needs to be labeled the same.
Thirdly, if this is about throat cancer, the other poster is right, it's about temperature. I remember reading an article in the earlier 90s that many Asians had higher rates of throat cancer and they first said it might be something in the tea, but the study faced ridiculous levels of criticism and hundreds of other sources said it was obviously due to repeatedly burning the back of the throat due to drinking tea at too high temperatures. This has zero to do with coffee itself.
They also forget to mention that the amount of acrylamide in coffee is so minuscule that you would need to drink approximately 15 thousand cups a coffee a day for about a year.
According to California, EVERYTHING causes cancer. We should just stick a label on everything to make sure we cover all our bases.
Warning: Most of California's leadership / residents are complete idiots and, when they move to other States, have a tendency to bring their own special brand of stupidity with them. Which, they then demand that their new home city adopt the same stupid rules, regulations and ideals that caused them to move away from California in the first place.
Personally, I think California causes cancer :|
I can only hope they eventually follow through on their secession threat so we can wall off that side of the country and keep them there.
acrylamide, a substance created naturally during the brewing process
Since when did coffee beans naturally brew themselves?
Just sayin'
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
These warnings are meaningless. Their purpose was to setup a mechanism for attorneys to sue any company for failing to warn you. So every company puts them everywhere.
Marijuana, from what I've heard, is more likely to cause COPD, while cigarettes can cause COPD or Lung Cancer.
I have been curious for a while what issues long term usage of marijuana via either oral or suppository forms leads to, or if they are in fact safe to consume if not smoked. Food for thought.
So modify the ruling so that the label says probably cause instead of known to cause.
Save space on the label and be more accurate.
I assume that California will now mandate signs on all egress doors warning that solar radiation is an IARC Group 1 carcinogen, the highest rating there is.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
This won't say that coffee causes cancer. It doesn't say that the ingredients in your coffee are causing cancer if you drink it.
This is simply the knowledge that there exist ingredients in your coffee that do, in some scenarios, cause cancer in some beings.
It has nothing to do with you drinking it.
It's like advertising on a bottle of ketchup: "ketchup can also be used to remove rust from cutlery". It has nothing to do with your hot dog.
It's just interesting knowledge. If you choose to believe that rust-removal systems shouldn't be ingested, then you can avoid ketchup. If you don't want to support the manufacture of ingredients that can researchers can use to kill rats, maybe because you support the rat population, then you can avoid supporting such fabrication by not buying coffee.
It's nothing more than this-is-the-knowledge-we-have, so do-with-it-what-you-will.
They do put those labels on an incredible amount of stuff. I guess I understand the original intent of the warnings, and it seems like they had good intentions. But there comes a point when they need to re-evaluate the utility. When warning labels are on almost everything you see, they reach a point of semantic satiation, where they lose all meaning.
As a product liability issue, if I were selling physical products in California, I'd be tempted to put a warning label on everything I sold, regardless of whether they said I had to. That way, I can't get caught when it turns out that some chemical that was used in the preparation of some part turns out to be on the bad list...
about the homeless person feces in the streets.
In view of California's other hazards, recent and future, this is another pathetic imposition from the Moonbeam state.
One can certainly get cancer from the environment, via sunburn.
Raise your hand if you were the least bit surprised this "legislation" came out of California?
Exactly. More pointless government intrusiveness and overreach. The end effects of this will be higher costs on businesses, higher costs to consumers, no measurable benefits anywhere to anyone except lawyers and politicians.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
You're not exaggerating by much when you say everything. Even parking garages and hotels are required to have cancer warnings.
Acrylamide does cause cancer, Republican denialist moron. The issue with this is over-labeling a trace amount of something while ignoring huge other carcinogens like Monsanto Glyphosate or processed/arti-preserved meat products.
It was a time when fear of hazardous waste and industrial chemicals was high, when chemophobia -- a blanket fear of anything having to do with the word 'chemicals'
If anything, that is worse today. Point out to someone that broccoli is mostly carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and they get confused. They can't explain what it is exactly that they don't like, but "chemicals" is not the answer.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Acrylamide has been known as a carcinogen for quite a long time, at least for high concentrations in contact with the skin. When you have swallowed it however, it gets submerged in stomach acid which should destroy it.
All carbs that have been roasted contain acrylamide, the darker the roasting the higher the concentration. Another known source is bread crust that has been baked a dark brown.
But there is a lot more to cancer risk than ingesting one type of carcinogen.
Coffee is also known to contain a high amount of antioxidants that are known to neutralise free radicals -- another group of carcinogens.
So the net effect of drinking coffee may in fact be beneficial.
We ingest and inhale all sorts of other carcinogens all the time and cancer cells do form in the body quite often -- but are almost always quickly killed by the immune system! I believe that the best way to avoid getting cancer is to keep a strong immune system by keeping both the body and mind strong and healthy -- and that means most of all to avoid a stressful lifestyle.
BTW. Dark-roasted coffee is overrated anyway. I see no point in drinking something with a taste of tar and with most of the good coffee flavour having been destroyed in the roasting.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
The last time I was in California, the hotel I was staying at (which was a $400+/night hotel) had a small sign in the lobby that said that the hotel itself was known to the state of California to possibly cause cancer. This, combined with the Disneyland sign (Disneyland also has a sign that says it causes Cancer) should be all the evidence needed to.prove that this law does absolutely nothing and is simply a mocking example of the end result of the direct democracy system in place in California.
Even parking garages and hotels are required to have cancer warnings.
Both of those are cancerous blights, so score one from California.
Is who pushed this to court/into a law the court had to rule on?
I think that will tell us MUCH MUCH more.
Nuff said
They can stop selling coffee in California since they think it's a carcinogen.
That means that all of the coffee drinkers in Silicon Valley will either have to stop or move to some place sane.
This is a double win for those of us in the "flyover" states. Coffee will be cheaper due to decreased demand and companies will be forced to pay higher wages to programmers to lure them to the lands of soybeans and corn where coffee can be had!
You do realize what things like this are don't you? This type of thing is pushed so that companies that for years dumped incredibly dangerous chemicals everywhere can go back to doing that again once they "prove" how stupid the "anti-chemical" laws are by seeing them enforced against something as stupid as the amount of acyclamide in coffee. Same thing why the push to enforce bans against open-burning (that aren't fire related) claiming that people having bbq's is making a similar environmental impact as factories spewing poisonous shit into the air and water without any regard to the future health of humanity. Don't be fucking stupid. Don't fall for it.
"But I am sure it won't causes cancers in humans, coz we're special".
What nonsense. The ruling is correct. Good on Calif.
If you must drunk, have a weak one.
You must also be a whiny Republican moron, because not only DOES Disneyland cause cancer, you probably have it in your retarded brain, right now. This law nor ANY are the result of "direct democracy" you fucking idiot lol.
The article mentions that Starbucks is against labeling coffee with the warning, which makes sense. Starbucks should stick it in the eye of California by creating a special blend where the packaging is just the warning label itself. Advertise it, draw attention to it so that consumers become aware of what a farce Proposition 65 has become.
It reminds me of a story told at the end of one of Paul Harvey's news segments. A regulator tells an established small diner that given the number of customers the establishment seats an additional toilet must be installed. To resize the bathroom or build a second would eat up a large chunk of the seating in the diner. Of course the owner's appeals were denied. The Regulatory State must be appeased. His solution was to install a fully functioning toilet in the front display window of the diner.
According to California, EVERYTHING causes cancer. We should just stick a label on everything to make sure we cover all our bases.
Warning: Most of California's leadership / residents are complete idiots and, when they move to other States, have a tendency to bring their own special brand of stupidity with them. Which, they then demand that their new home city adopt the same stupid rules, regulations and ideals that caused them to move away from California in the first place.
Personally, I think California causes cancer :|
I can only hope they eventually follow through on their secession threat so we can wall off that side of the country and keep them there.
Just ask any Oregonian
Stick your head into a bag of powdered asbestos and take a dozen deep breaths.
They find something they don't like and ignore all evidence of the contrary to it. They are not looking for evidence they are wrong so they never see it.
https://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodborneIllnessContaminants/ChemicalContaminants/ucm053549.htm
Info by fda. Brewed coffee seems to have very little.
Breathing oxygen increase the risk of cancer, we need to ban breathing,
1) As a proud, card-carrying, tree-hugging Liberal(TM) I'm dismayed by this as it feeds into that whole "Gummint Bad" mentality that can be fed by such bizarre rulings.
:-)
2) As long as there is no outright ban or special tax, ala the "soda tax", which is just stupid, on coffee, then labelling is, IMO, just spreading knowledge. Look at the labels on every gas pump warning that gas fumes are bad. Well, D'uh! As a gas-jockey back in the day, I might have liked to know, but still would likely have made the same - but fully informed - decision to keep running out to to fill up each car that pulled to the pumps.
YMMV.
Acrylamide scare reminds me a little of the great devil Nitrates/Nitrites. Many people demand only healthy "uncured bacon" to avoid nitrates while happily munching on healthe veggies that contain a lot of Nitrate. Meanwhile it appears that coffee drinkers live longer and healthier lives.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
*awaits the dramatic twist: Labels in California Cause Cancer. Class-action suit launched against Everyone.
What everybody (except maybe a few mom and pops) have been doing for a good decade now.
Why wouldn't you?
I think the forest service should put the signs on the national forests. At least on every logging road...That will be a good use of money.
Also the state and national parks...just full of known carcinogens. Every fire pit, no matter how temporary, needs a warning. Best just put one on every rock.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Not actual bums... the political freak show that is CA... Throw them all out before it's too late.
Science is not static and California did not bypass it. Science is a constant process of discovery and the results are seldom binary.
A better opinion piece with citations: https://www.healthline.com/nut...
Has anyone ever heard of Acrylamide before reading the original article?
I'm still going to enjoy coffee regardless of the warning label informing me of exposure.
Why stay ignorant?
When new science comes out, I'll adjust accordingly.*
People are still going to do whatever they want https://youtu.be/wGI3rL7smN8
We left a generation dead from "No Smoking DOES NOT cause cancer".
And who kept singing that chorus?
* DRINK UP the science: .. roasting process had the most significant effect on acrylamide levels in natural coffee https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... ...bad luck... these results suggest ... 0.81 correlation http://science.sciencemag.org/...
Acrylamide is NOT known to occur as a natural product. pg 392 https://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG...
but wait?! it does roast naturally
Cancer is just
It's really safe to drink no warnings needed https://youtu.be/ovKw6YjqSfM
A labeling law was passed by CA voters, and then the technology got better at detecting potential problems. The law probably needs tuning, like everything else subject to scientific and technological progress. Adjust and move on instead of make it into a red-vs-blue troll-war.
Table-ized A.I.
The real problem is that it was passed by voters, which means fixing it will either take a long petition/proposition/vote process, or require a large majority in the legislature. Making adjustments in this case is not easy.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Just make the crime of labeling products that don't have carcinogens the same as not labeling ones that do.
Yes, brought to you by the people who don't realize that sticking "DANGER" signs on everything doesn't actually make people safer.
Of course its rarely about actual risk and more about lawsuit avoidance (we warned you that this site contains substances known to cause cancer), or simply scoring political points with stupid voters.
I'm assuming that we will soon have radiation trifoils everywhere because there is detectable radiation everywhere.
Where do these studies come from... you have plenty of data worldwide to infer some statistical conclusions. E.g. in Finland they drink four times as much coffee per capita compared the U.S., and there perinatal mortality is much lower than in the U.S. (or in California, for that matter).
Makes me want to start smoking again.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
That's fine; let democracy do what it will.
I'd personally like to see a risk ranking/scoring system, similar to the restaurant health & safety inspection grades that CA also has. If coffee is a low risk, it will be graded as such. (Heavy cooking does introduce carcinogens into food in general. The real question whether it's significant or not.)
Table-ized A.I.
The real problem is that it was passed by voters, which means fixing it will either take a long petition/proposition/vote process, or require a large majority in the legislature. Making adjustments in this case is not easy.
The Dems have a supermajority in California legislature which matches the voter demographics. The problem is a majority of people (voters and/or legislators) are still pro-label and anti-change, not that this is difficult to fix, but labelling still appears to represent the majority view...
That's the probably a symptom of democracy. We are collectively subject to the will of the majority..
They also need to send a mission to the Sun to put a warning label there as well. Thy will have to go at night though, so they don't burn up.
This space unintentionally left blank.
Oh yeah Oregon, the only state in the country where it is too dangerous to pump gas yourself.
Everything in California causes cancer. I'm staying the fuck out of that death trap.
California does host a lot of tech campanies that has and spreads mental and morality cancer
The warnings are due to Proposition 65 - a citizen's ballot initiative which passed in 1986. It mandates a ridiculously low non-scientific threshold for requiring a cancer warning - a 1 in 100,000 chance of getting cancer due to exposure. By comparison, your lifetime odds of being killed by car is 1 in 114. By a pool is 1 in 5772. By falling from a ladder is 1 in 7707. By dog attack is 1 in 112,400. By lightning is 1 in 161,856. So we're talking about cancer risk levels which are minuscule compared to other risks you face during your lifetime.
But that's the threshold Prop 65 requires. So practically everything ends up requiring a Prop 65 warning label, including silly things like coffee. The judge can disagree with it, but has to comply with it because the text of the law is very specific. I've often joked that every door leading outside should have a Prop 65 warning above it because sunlight is known to cause cancer (about 1 in 43 people will get skin cancer in their lifetime).
About the only purpose Prop 65 serves is to enrich lawyers who go around finding businesses without the warning sing, and suing them for non-compliance, then settling the lawsuit for a few thousand dollars. The usual victim is an immigrant small business owner who never would've dreamed that such a silly law exists.
You must also be a whiny Republican moron, because not only DOES Disneyland cause cancer, you probably have it in your retarded brain, right now. This law nor ANY are the result of "direct democracy" you fucking idiot lol.
I don't suppose you are familiar with the ballot proposition disaster that is enshrined in California law. Sadly, laws can be created by "direct democracy" in California this way...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Measures can be placed on the ballot either by the California State Legislature or via a petition signed by registered voters. The state legislature can place a state constitutional amendment or a proposed law change on the ballot as a referendum to be approved by voters. Under the state constitution, certain proposed changes to state laws may require mandatory referenda, and must be approved by voters before they can take effect. A measure placed on the ballot via petition can either be a vote to veto a law that has been adopted by the legislature (an optional referendum or "people's veto") or a new proposed law (initiative).
Of course "prop 65" is one of these proposition laws...
Will bread come with this mandatory label as well? I saw some study years ago that toasted bread was carcinogenic as well. Something about the burnt bread in the toasting process. How long till toasting bread will be illegal in CA?
True, you'd need your judicial activists to actually respect the constitution of California to have direct democracy.
Leave it to California to come up with a system that's somehow worse than both direct democracy and a representative republic.
NJ.
"Failure by judges and journalists and environmental advocates to acknowledge the critical difference between probably and certainly fuels the inaccurate belief that cancer is mostly caused by things in the environment."
There lies, lies, and heuristics.
From Wikipedia: A heuristic technique (/hjrstk/; Ancient Greek: , "find" or "discover"), often called simply a heuristic, is any approach to problem solving, learning, or discovery that employs a practical method not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect, but sufficient for the immediate goals.
In this situation:
Option 1, respond to a situation with a high probability of occurring as if it will occur.
Option 2. wait until it has been determined that it will occur with certainty, or that it 100% will occur
Option 2 b. option 2 is confirmed when it occurs, as opposed to determining by other methods that it will occur.
Discussion. If the thing that may or may not occur is disastrous or merely unwanted, it may be wiser to take action as-if it is likely to occur, thus preventing the occurrence or mitigating the effects. Which is why most of the time we lock our doors.
Example: The Cheney Doctrine is the concept that if there is a 1% chance a group of terrorists can attack the United States with a weapon of mass destruction, then the United States should respond as-if there is a 100% chance they will attack us with a WMD.
Yes, that violates my point above; 1% is nothing at all like certainty, but the bad effects are so bad, it may take several "dirty bombs" to kill as many people as cancer does every year. (Give me mod points for being cute!)
Illogical argument #2 .22, but someone else could have shot him with a .38 or a .45!"
I call this the smaller gun theory. A person on trial for shooting someone in his defense states, "Yes, I shot him with a
Or, a young boy... "Yes, I stole 3 cookies from the cookie jar, but Billie stole 7 cookies."
In the article, you may spot a similar same logic in this sentence (although in this case they are comparing risk of occurrence versus the severity of injury):
"Leading experts, in fact, believe that roughly two-thirds of all cancers are the result of mutations to DNA that are caused by natural bodily processes, not exposure to environmental chemicals." In other words, environmental chemicals increase the risk of getting cancer by 50%, and that is...okay to set aside, ignore? The authors do not define if environmental chemicals include naturally occurring or only man-made.
Ilogical argument #3
A variation on an ad hominen attack, in this case attacking The State of California, which by the way, has some extremely conservative people living there.
I propose a new concept: reductio ad Californium, a blatant take off on reduction ad Hitlerum.
Bananas contain potassium. Some of the natural potassium is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium-40 which is radioactive and radiates your body. Isaac Asimov once conjectured that the radiation from potassium in animal's bodies is what accelerated evolution - but of course causes cancers too.
So let's label bananas!
See what I did there?
....acrylamide, a substance created naturally during the brewing process...
Acrylamide is created during the roasting process and not during brewing. The temperatures during brewing are way too low and the time far too short for the Maillard reaction to happen.
I feel so sig.
Firstly, there is probably good reason to be wary of acrylamides, but they are present in just about anything that has been fried or baked, as far as I know. Whether coffee in particular should be labeled as carcinogenic, I don't know.
The other thing is, we probably have the wrong idea about what cancer is - something like "there is a cancer cell in my body" = "I have cancer". On that criterion, we all have cancer all of the time, more or less, because cell divisions go wrong quite often, and some of those cells are what you would call cancerous. However, a healthy person's immune system takes care of them, which is why cancers mostly become serious when we get old or when the immune system is compromised, eg. by AIDS.
Instead of putting labels on coffee, it would make more sense to educate people about healthy life choices, IMO.
Life, a condition that will ultimately lead to death. ;-)
But is a life without coffee really a life at all, or is it merely an existence?
This is really an attempt to demonize other things so as to ignore things that are too inconvenient like cell phone towers and wifi which have federal regulations in place because it is a not contested that these technologies DO cause cancer. They are also pushing to ban cosmetics that are tested on animals in favor of cosmetics that are not. Cosmetics contain many chemicals that are known carcinogens and it would be very sensible and logical to continue to test them on animals rather than not and just introduce the product and wait for the humans to test it for them....And yes, approvals are bought and paid for so stop right there. I do not put it past federal and state regulators to accept animal tested products claiming likewise because the system is so rampant with corruption and we are suppose to put faith in such a system???
The whole system in California is pretty ass backwards and counter productive and is based on absolutely no logic whatsoever.
As a product liability issue, if I were selling physical products in California, I'd be tempted to put a warning label on everything I sold, regardless of whether they said I had to.
Reading this post gave me cancer. Expect a lawsuit.
it does make me smile to think of hipsters in San Francisco with their man-bun
I figured somebody must get off on that look; now we know who.
to cause stupid
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Considering that the sun is a known carcinogen, as is oxygen, I guess we need to develop one huge Proposition 65 label and smash it all over the entire state. Of course, the solar panels that they just mandated be placed on every new home also contain chemicals known to cause cancer...
The science shows that the substance causes cancer in animals.
The signs state that the substance causes cancer.
It's stupid and pointless, but it's not going against the science. If you want to attack prop 65 then do so because it's stupid and pointless, don't resort to lying about the science.
I sure as hell ignore the "no guns" signs - except for government buildings - they have a bit more "bite". But business - meh - fuck em. I have my rights!
And California - hell that WHOLE STATE IS a CANCER! When they find a cure for cancer - which they never will announce even if they do - too much $$$$$ in it. They should use it on the state of California FIRST!
California is like a bowl of cereal, if your not a fruit, or a nut, your a flake!
Articles like this remind me how mindfuckingly dumb the average American is, and by extension the people they vote for, the laws they make etc. I feel sorry for the more intelligent part of the population that has to suffer and deal with all this shit.
The really sad thing is that dumbness seems to be infective, spreading all over the globe. Only hope is China and Russia, where there seems to be some can-do don't-care mentality left. For now.
Coffee addicts without coffee would result in the worst crisis the world has ever seen and coffee drinkers know this ! Programmers would sit at the keyboard repeatedly pressing delete, and getting annoyed by the guy cursing out loud next to them who also has no coffee. IT would keep trying to plug in the same ethernet cable in the same jack upside down resorting to cursing it and how it never listens. Call center workers would be heard scolding callers for talking so loud and being informed how rude it is for them to call so early in the morning. Workers in factories on the assembly line repeatedly putting the same screw in the same hole only to learn the part wasn't supposed to have a hole there. Teachers calling students by the wrong names and wondering if I locked the door at home and why aren't those kids responding ? A chain reaction of traffic accidents would occur caused by the sleepy drivers crashing into the panicked drivers who are late because without the coffee they can't get going.
IARC is not highly respected for the very point made here. There designations ignore dosage. If you drown a lab rat in something and it gets cancer to IARC Its a carcinogen. That pretty much makes everything a carcinogen. Alcohol, campfires, woodworking, they all hold IARCs highest warning. They also do not really take into account the credibility of studies just quantity.
Of any product in the state of California that they state knows causes cancer.
Since California allows the sale of such products, shouldn't they pay for all cancer treatment?
Would I be right in thinking that the 'birth defects' mentioned were produced in rats and/or mice and/or other animals, using high doses of acrylamides? Is there any evidence whatsoever in HUMANS that drinking coffee causes birth defects? How ridiculous.
The probability coffee will cause you cancer approaches 100% when you will be celebrating your 300th birthday while drinking 5 cups daily.
Oh, wait...
Remember, kids, that the chemical DHMO is LETHAL. Exccess inhalation can cause death by drowning, excess consumption can cause your brain to swell up, and if cooled sufficiently, it becomes a solid with potential to KILL if mishandled. DHMO has also been found in significant concentrations in ALL cancers. Please, can we ban this deadly chemical!
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
Can't Slashdot at least find submissions made by literate and somewhat intellectually capable people?
It is the roasting process that forms acrylamide in coffee, not brewing.
The roasting and brewing processes are not natural processes but activities of people. Artifice.
Science uses probability all the time. The argument made involving probability vs certainty in the submission is the same ignorant drivel spewed by climate change deniers and other people who can't seem to understand the use of mathematics in human endeavors.
" It was a time when fear of hazardous waste and industrial chemicals was high, when chemophobia -- a blanket fear of anything having to do with the word 'chemicals' -- was being seared into the public's mind."
Oh for goodness sake. Blanket fear? Seared? What a bunch of crap. Can't you at least find someone with some basic intellect and subtlety to thrash out your click bait?
The info about acrylamide, label or not, is actually useful. It can have us evaluate differing processes to find which ones result in less exposure to probably harmful agents. It can also help us ask what the beneficial items in coffee may be and how they occur as a result of process differences.
In short, this labeling can be encountered by rational, emotionally healthy adults who will not have their minds boggle nor begin frothing at the mouth about god knows what crazy set of preconceptions you wish to inflame in this ridiculous submission.
In other words the info about acrylamide (also found in black olives, braised asparagus and burnt food) is useful. If you have an intellect that exceeds that of a single transistor then the label info is helpful and really not a problem.
It's a wonder that the churls who have a problem with this labeling would have the hand/eye coordination to hurl a beer can at the TV. Or do you?
Californians get to suffer a little more because of their legal stupidity. I hope manufacturers will be good enough to use stickers or make California specific packaging (or just stop selling in California) rather than subjecting the rest of us to this lunacy. Personally, I think if it's such a problem then California should just ban Coffee outright. ;)
I long for a day when EVERYTHING has a label on it saying it might cause cancer. When that day comes, we'll all just ignore these idiotic labels, and maybe we'll finally get rid of them.
This is the beginning of the end for Prop 65. We just need this applied to other common foods that contain acrylamide, like toast. I want all restaurants that serve toast to have a warning. The more warnings we have for obviously non-harmful things, the quicker we'll get rid of this junk.
In short, if people think EVERYTHING causes cancer, then nothing causes cancer. Then maybe we can get back to some sanity and realize that beyond not smoking and avoiding seriously toxic substances like benzene, there's not much you can do to prevent cancer.
This certainly seems like an overreaction given how many other foods contain acrylamide. On the other hand they could just be trying to force the industry to find a way to remove the chemical from food stuffs. Without regulation a profit maximizing corporation will almost never go out of its way to reduce negative environmental or health impacts of a product.
/. indicator of such.
IIRC they were also originally focused on dark roasted coffee, which contains more acrylamide than other variants. Not sure if this ruling applies to all coffee or just dark roast.
Side note: I'm still waiting for them to go after sugar and it's link to heart disease. Get the popcorn ready for that one.
Also, the first link in the summary is paywalled and lacks the usual
So, should CA start posting signs that Lawyers can cause cancer?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
How big will the sign on the door of Starbuck have to be?
And the Cinnamon Buns can cause diabetes.
Enjoy your roundup ready munchies and your GMO popcorn. I'll stick with teh chem free thankyouverymuch. We'll compare notes in 30 years when the REAL scientific evidence is truly available. I'll err on the side of caution. There aren't enough long term studies yet. I at least have an open mind and I'll wait for the long term evidence to surface. You on the other hand have already concluded that your chemicals and gmo's are safe. Now who's ignoring science?
As much as we like to assume legislators are simply braindead .. this is not always the case.
The most likely explanation here: they tried to shake various coffee chains, distributors, and resellers down for "campaign contributions" and were denied. Hence, added to the cancer list.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
...is fucking bananas. Long past time to get the hell out.
If this were real news, how would we blame cancer on our corporate overlords? Obviously, this is fake news pushed by the big coffee conglomerates.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
a carcinogen and known to cause cancer and be harmful to life as we know it.
;)
Just my 2 cents
Deep fried chips and burnt BBQ meat and sausages are far better sources to get you acrylamide from .. If the chips are brown then...
For UK people there is a study that beer and BBQ red meat is bad news..
Now if you take green coffee, I think that's good for you. Most of the Latte line only drink non-robusta, again a healthy outcome.
Everything in California's mind causes cancer, so I can't say I'm shocked by this.
You all need a mirror if you think those on the left in any way support science except as a means to an end when convenient.
We all know that chemicals are evil, industrial substances created by capitalism and distributed by greed. Once chemicals of any kind get into us, whether it's through the agro-industrial complex or by chemtrails and other government experimentation on us, we're just going to get cancer. It is only a matter of time.
What the government fears most is that the existence and widespread use of one particular chemical will be revealed to the public, exposing their treachery once and for all. They even sponsor a huge government-sponsored lobby to make this chemical even sound like it is good for you. They even gave it a cute name to make it sound completely harmless.
But, make no mistake. Dihydrogen Monoxide is by far the worst, most toxic chemical ever envisioned. In fact, this chemical is found in ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of **ALL** CANCERS. Period. There is not a single cancer case EVER RECORDED where DHMO was not found.
Let that sink in for a moment, and then do the right thing. Oppose DHMO to your dying breath.
California should just label everything a carcinogen at this point.
that way everything is equally dangerous
lead paint = coffee
Well, yeah, but only in California.
(This is a joke I hear pretty often whenever these warnings are brought up.)
And pass even more bizarre/stupid/dangerous etc propositions and/or laws. Itâ(TM)s what they do.
Probably got more going for it than any of their presumably human possible candidates.
Meat and coffee will kill me but better that than be a 100 year old vegan.
Prove them wrong then lol. Or don't produce coffee with those chemicals, etc.
California Proposition 65 labeling requirements require that the warning label state ". . . known to the State of California . . ."
None of this wishy washy language of "may", "suspected", "possibly", "linked to", or "according to the pope".
three letters: BPA
That anyone escapes high school without a solid foundation in economic marginalism is a national catastrophe, but there it is (from economics, also comparative advantage; from psychology a few select cognitive biases; finally, from statistics a fair list of sanity principles—these collectively essential to achieving 100% military power Iron Manchild / Iron Maiden batshit escape velocity).
Obviously (at least to anyone with a passing grade), the background rate is not on the margin (refer to definition of economic margin).
Preventable cancer is on the economic margin.
We talk about the margin (where change is possible) rather than the base rate (where change is still a twinkle of a some sketchy garret innovator that no-one is yet willing to believe) because that's where today's action resides (Willie Sutton: "I rob banks because that's where the money is"—which is surprisingly uncommon wisdom, once the zen origami is fully unfolded).
People struggling to assimilate this reality (how important something is at base rate / what gets the most air time) need to review their earliest childhood encounter concerning how a large nickel is worth less than a small dime. Oh, cruel world, very difficult! My heart goes out to you. Truly, I feel your pain.
But then these same people dial into the margin real quick when it's introduced to the talk-radio leprosy mosh pit as a "death panel" (modern leprosy is an incurable attitude, on a short, repeating, call-in loop).
Quality-adjusted life year
With an entire wonky literature, all to itself:
Is the value of a life or life-year saved context specific? Further evidence from a discrete choice experiment
"Death panel" batshit escape velocity: impulse power hip wader.
Warning: do not place ladder on frozen manure pile; it may cause cancer.
Coffee is actually good for you; drinking it is correlated with longer lifespan. http://www.bbc.com/news/health-40567047
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
This is all basically payback for class action lawyer to continue their perpetual tort machines rolling.
Prop 65 is a stupid law. But it's easily routed around. Just put warning signs everywhere (and shoot all the lawyers).
But prop 215 has started a nationwide change for the better. It would have happened anyhow, just demographics, but 215 moved it forward, fast.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
when they move to other States, have a tendency to bring their own special brand of stupidity with them. Which, they then demand that their new home city adopt the same stupid rules, regulations and ideals that caused them to move away from California in the first place.
I'm going to disagree with you there. I'm from Texas originally and quite frankly I got sick of people whining about Californians moving to Texas. How many generations have they lived in Texas and where the hell did they come from in the first place?
Sorry, but Texas is changing and it's not because of all those damned Californians - or those damned Yankees either. And they're not all bad people either.
But now I live in Colorado and I hear the same shit about Californians, but I also get to hear it about Texans too. I mean I can understand why. Colorado is a beautiful state and a great place to live but our population is booming and I'm sorry I didn't lock the gate right after I moved here.
I can't even see the mountains from my bedroom window anymore!
I'm unsure about one thing though. Should I thank the Californians for legalized marijuana or did we do that all by ourselves? And how many decades do I have to live here before I'm no longer considered an invasive species?