Coffee sold in California must carry cancer warning, judge rules

I think it's a way to shift liability to the consumer.

*these warnings brought to you by the National Tea Council (not really)

Prop 65 lawsuits are a money-making venture. There are law firms that specialize in bringing these cases and they collect tens of millions of dollars in settlements each year.

As non-residents of California, we're happy to hear that residents view these warnings the same way the rest of us do. It seems that _everything_ causes cancer in California.

The EU's cookie-law is often made light of here, but there's a difference between essential and non-essential cookies.

The non-essential cookie warnings for most intents and purposes can be read as "This site will track you".

Sites using essential cookies don't have to put up a warning.

Following third party links, I now often decide that particular content is not that important when the warning pops up. It also serves as a rudimentary filter for lower quality content.

So cookie warnings being everywhere tell me a tale about the sorry state of the Web, and not a joke about bureaucracy gone haywire.

But what else is the Council for Education and Research on Toxics going to do with their time?

As a consumer, I want to know the risks posed by what I buy and consume. Part of the (predictable) response to this is because its coffee. If it were, say, water bottles, cooking pots, or drinking straws; or if it were keyboards, cell phones, or socks-- the response would likely be different.

The problem is that the labels do not give us any idea of the absolute risks involved, and so, yeah, they are all ignored. A 3-4 level color coded warning would be much more useful, perhaps with a link to something more informative.

I once saw:

"This sign was printed with materials known by the state of California to cause ..."

As a resident of Oregon, I notice a curious pattern wherein shitty knockoff or generic products are more likely to carry the warnings, and the warnings don't say which ingredients caused the warnings to be issued. Doing reading on various product ingredients is interesting; in many cases, the manufacture of the product is hazardous to the workers, and so I have begun to see Prop 65 stickers as telling me that the laborers who produced the product worked in unsafe conditions.

In the specific case of coffee, it seems that this ruling was quite reasonable on the facts, up to the still-open question of whether acrylamide really should be considered carcinogenic.

I've read before that businesses take it much more seriously than people do. They will consider modify their products to remove the the need for warning labels. So the law can introduce changes. Here's an example of Coca-Cola modifying the formula for the caramel color in their soda: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/03/07/148075310/co...

It probably does more harm than good since it detracts from the severity of actual warnings on products we know can be dangerous.

I have the same issue with the EU cookie law which while well intentioned it essentially trained a whole generation to accept an annoying pop up without reading or understanding it.

I used to work for an eyeglass lens manufacturer. I remember having to set up a new label printing system to print labels that said "this product contains blah blah known to cause cancer blah blah". This was on eyeglass lenses. What's the exposure risk here? Eating them? Who eats their eyeglass lenses?

There must be another nefarious goal behind the lawsuit. When there is need to fight the government on so many more critical issues, why would a non profit choose to waste time and money on something so pointless ? Need to dig deeper

When does it become easier to label the things not known to the state of California to cause cancer?

I get the sarcasm, but would this be legal? It's satire if it's not actually known as a carcinogen, and a legal requirement if it is. It would dilute the warning in the public's perception, but companies might find it cheapest and easiest to just stick it on everything.

Should just start including it with bar code stickers in general.

The list of warned substances includes hormones naturally produced by the body.

WARNING: This human being contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.

"The production of cancer warning labels for California produces as much pollution as one large charcoal power plant."

The latest is maple syrup it now has to have a warning it "may contain lead".

Which is I think is an inflammatory way to phrase it. There should be a level shown: "This product has lead levels of 11ppb, California drinking water has lead levels of 11ppb".

edit: Oh and apple seeds naturally contain cyanide, bananas have radioactive potassium-40, fish has mercury and on and on.

A daily habit does not strike me as moderation

The situation is ironic, but there's an even higher level of irony in relation to cancer. In some contexts, NOT detecting cancer gives statistically better life quality and/or expectancy.

According to current statistics, testing methods (X-ray) are slightly harmful by minutely increasing risk of cancer, and the resulting overdiagnosis of benign tumors unleashes harsh medication on some people who'd otherwise have had happily lived their lives to natural lifespan without any significant symptoms or discomfort.

Plenty of literature on the internet, first few hits from Google: https://www.city-journal.org/html/stop-overscreening-cancer-... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4415291/

and a recent discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16500924, in particular https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16502246

This type of research is just BS to begin with. The way they collect and analyze the data is only capable of generating conflicting evidence while never leading to cumulative knowledge. The method is called NHST (null hypothesis significance testing).

The main issue is that a null hypothesis is tested rather than any real hypothesis, then they try to draw conclusions about the real hypothesis (yes it is a simple strawman argument). These problems are well known, yet it continues. I was trained to do it not too long ago.

Specifically thought to be caused by the Maillard reaction, which includes grilled / seared foods

Anecdote Alert! A very knowledgeable Chinese doctor (acupuncturist, trained on the mainland)warned me of this decades ago.

She said that for my body type, coffee was extremely bad. She explained (in her broken English)that the coffee contained "fire" due to the way the beans were processed and that this could make me more susceptible to cancer. Grilled food was also a no-no (for me). Baked & fried foods? For most people, fuggedaboudit!

I can't help but notice the latest research is beginning to show exactly what she told me all those years ago.

Yep, recently there was a small uproar here in Belgium when the EU wanted restrictions on the baking of fries because of this exact reason.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/20/chips-are-down...

Many building in California, including apartments, will carry the warning label if they were built before a certain year and if lead paint may have been used inside in the past. Even if the lead paint has been removed.

Many fast food drive thrus will have the sticker on the drive thru window due to the preservatives used in some of the food and the components used in the cooking process.

Disneyland has signs bearing the warning through out the park.

This was a voter passed proposition, which changed our constitution to require this signage.

The proposition wasn’t super well written, and it quickly became apparent that basically everything has to be labeled as possibly causing cancer. Unfortunately, since it’s in our constitution, it’s nearly impossible to change now.

The only winner here is the lawyers.

Don't tell them rice contains arsenic.

One of the downsides of ballot initiatives is not only you can pass silly laws via fear mongering, but it is also impossible to repeal them