Every single substance is toxic.
It’s simply a matter of dose.
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https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/acrylamide.html
Links to studies, plus actual interpretation of real world risk (tl;dr, not a significant factor)
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Indeed, at this point it is unproven to us that he did not inform the courts. But I think that it should have been in the filing in the initial suit, that he was a party at interest. I suspect he was not and that the authors know that, as such paperwork is generally easy to get, as opposed to court transcripts of testimony in court, where you have to pay for a transcription. They don’t know if somewehere in all of the testimony and other filings if his conflict of interest was mentioned at some point. That is my conjecture at this point.
Probably not. Prop 65 enforcement is pretty clear. Based on the law, coffee should have been covered. Acrilimides have been shown to cause cancer in animal studies at quantity X. The law says if you expose people to quantities X/N and it is not naturally occurring you have to post a notice. Coffee does, and it results from the roasting process not naturally occurring in the beans. Therefore a notice was required. The lawsuit was not frivolous because the plantiffs were right regardless of their intentions or conflicts of interest.
The basic problem with prop65 is that N is too big and science has gotten better. The compounding problem is that for environmental hazards (rather than food) it is completely unclear what the exposure is. There is no mandated testing. all you have to do is post the sign and there is no way to find out if the carciongens are present in quantity X or X/ 1000 or X/1000000. It’s easier and cheaper to post the sign than to check if you actually need to.
I think that may be one of those areas where something can be actually but not legally frivolous.
I don’t see any links to the literature in your link, just to other organizations, but the NCI link I gave above does link to studies. In any event, I think your tl;dr summary is optimistic.
From your link:
Based on current research, some of these organizations have made the following determinations:
- The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classifies acrylamide as a “probable human carcinogen.”
- The US National Toxicology Program (NTP) has classified acrylamide as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.”
- The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classifies acrylamide as “likely to be carcinogenic to humans.”
(Emphasis theirs.)
From my link:
Studies in rodent models have found that acrylamide exposure increases the risk for several types of cancer (10–13). In the body, acrylamide is converted to a compound called glycidamide, which causes mutations in and damage to DNA. However, a large number of epidemiologic studies (both case-control and cohort studies) in humans have found no consistent evidence that dietary acrylamide exposure is associated with the risk of any type of cancer (9, 14). One reason for the inconsistent findings from human studies may be the difficulty in determining a person’s acrylamide intake based on their reported diet.
The National Toxicology Program’s Report on Carcinogens considers acrylamide to be reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen, based on studies in laboratory animals given acrylamide in drinking water. However, toxicology studies have shown that humans and rodents not only absorb acrylamide at different rates, they metabolize it differently as well (15–17).
Additional epidemiologic studies in which acrylamide adduct or metabolite levels are serially measured in the same individuals over time (longitudinal cohorts) are needed to help determine whether dietary acrylamide intakes are associated with increased cancer risks in people.
In other words: the evidence is strong that it causes cancer in rats; a mechanism (conversion to glycadamine) by which it could cause damage in humans is understood; the studies so far as to whether it causes cancer in humans are incomplete and therefore inconclusive.
Normally on BB when a watchdog organization accuses an industry of exposing the public to dangerous chemicals, our knee-jerk reaction is to support the watchdog and be skeptical of attempts to discredit their scientists. In this case, our love of coffee and french fries seems to have flipped our default sympathies in the opposite direction. Me, I like coffee and fries as much as the next fellow, and my gut reaction too is that the lawsuits seem silly, on the other hand I also have close friends and respected colleagues who work in this branch of public health, and however I feel about the lawsuits I’m inclined to give Smith the benefit of the doubt on the integrity question, at least given the evidence we’ve seen.
Now, if someone turns up a photo of him wearing faux Birkenstock sandal socks, my opinion will do a 180.
“So far reviews of studies done in groups of people ( epidemiologic studies ) suggest that dietary acrylamide isnt likely to be related to risk for most common types of cancer. But ongoing studies will continue to provide more information…” Pretty much as close as you will get to a definitive statement, and the American Cancer Society is a pretty reputable organization. Nothing is “conclusive.” If you wish to avoid acrylamide, boil your food and give up coffee. Realistically, the impact on your cancer risk will be minimal. Although laying off fried foods will provide benefits unrelated to acrylamide!
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I would say instead that it is a highly qualified statement. (For example, why only mention “common types” of cancer? The rat studies tended to be thyroid and liver tumors.) All they’re saying – after noting that the scientific organizations from whom they gather their information see acrylamide as a definite cancer risk – is that there are difficulties with the human studies to date.
We know that ingestion of this stuff causes cancer in rats. The scientific organizations quoted by the ACS all think that it probably causes cancer in humans. The human studies to date, however, aren’t good enough to definitively rule either way. (If you dig down to the studies and the reviews, problems include things like the difficulty in measuring dietary acrylamide intake in people, presumably because they don’t tend to eat just what you put in their cage.)
I intend to keep drinking coffee because I believe as a matter of faith that the effect is small (especially compared to the chemicals I regularly came into contact with while working as a water pollution inspector for the EPA). However, studies supporting that faith simply aren’t there yet, and acrylamide was certainly potentially harmful enough to be covered by Prop. 65.
Incidentally, we didn’t have any studies linking DDT to adverse effects on human health until 2001. There are organizations that want to bring it back. Organizations like the ACSH, which is a pro-industry advocacy nonprofit that also loves fracking, bisphenol-A, and secondhand cigarette smoke, and agrees with you that there’s nothing wrong with acrylamide and with the posters upthread that the CERT lawsuits were a scam.
In this case it may be the clear impression that the watchdog is in it to fill his own dog bowl with several million tasty biscuits. (And btw, a “knee-jerk reaction” is a sign of poor decision making skills, I think that BB’ers are smarter than that.)
Actually, I read a the ACS statement as an accurate real world interpretation of data. Trying to prove a negative is notoriously difficult. There is not definitive proof that vaccines do not cause autism, as every sturdy has a limited predictive power, and science by its nature is always open to new evidence. Could acrylamide by a significant carcinogen? Maybe, but current evidence does not show it to be so. My major issue with this law is not so much about acrylamide specifically, but that putting a warning label on everything that could possibly cause cancer, at any possible level makes warning labels on things that do cause cancer at real world exposure levels ignorable by anyone who is not prepared to do a deep literature search on every one. That is to say, no one.
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There are quite a few BB posters and authors who live in California. My guess is that they see so many nonsense “cancer warnings” as a result of Prop 65 that those warnings have pretty much become background static.
Which is one reason why they are not seeing this anti-coffee scam as a case of virtuous scientist versus evil corporations. (The fact that coffee is a wonderful thing in itself probably helps too).
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Jeebus can we just repeal prop 65 already. Ugh.
On the other hand maybe it has value as exhibit A of “Do Something! (but be vague)” disease. If only there were a vaccine.
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And yet this describes a decent size chunk of smaller non-profits I’ve seen. The ones that are essentially successful vanity projects or make-your-own-job sorts that unemployed lawyers and artists start.
It’s a misnomer that I wish would die and we could come up with a more accurate name. The problem is that the term is technically accurate for what it is (that there aren’t investors who expect a return on capital), yet that’s not how the general public interprets it (most people equating for-profit with self-interest and thus non-profit with more noble sentiments). But at the individual level you have to squint pretty hard to see a difference between investing and taking profits and investing in fundraising and pocketing the excess portion of the proceeds through a salary/expense account.
I do not disagree with this. However, rather than make a coffee exception the right thing to do is probably to totally rethink Prop 65.
autism
The evidence that vaccines do not cause autism is actually pretty strong. The case-controlled evidence in animal testing is negative, and there is good correlation data for humans because the data is clean (eg, we know who has had a jab). The problem in this case is that the case-controlled evidence in animals is positive, and there is no clean data for human ingestion.
I sincerely hope you realize I was using the most ridiculous case I could think of. I have a long history in the vaccine wars both here and in real life. And it is probably for the best that i stop this now.
I am aware.
My reaction in the thread was really to the demonization of the scientist. As a STEM faculty member with friends and colleagues in public health, med schools, and cancer centers, and who has done some statistical consulting in biomedical legal cases, while I have seen a couple of bad apples, mainly they are dedicated scientists who too often get attacked for working in the public interest.
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