California moves to declare coffee safe from cancer risk | Hacker News Reader

California moves to declare coffee safe from cancer risk

japantimes.co.jp

69 pointspmoriarty68 comments

Seems simple enough. Just feed mice roasted coffee beans as their only food (which should keep them alive, shouldn't it?) and see what happens.

I'm pretty sure if you could find molecules in anything that, if extracted and injected in large quantities into a living organism's body would cause cancer.

But here's the thing: living organisms have evolved to process whole foods. Although coffee could be seen as a sort of extract, it still is a natural product containing very complex and intricate combinations of compounds, not just one single, isolated chemical.

This is why, for example, cocaine is so much worse than natives in the Andes chewing coca leaves, why whiskey is so much worse than alcohol-containing rotten fruit that even bears have been observed to enjoy, etc. etc. etc.

>Seems simple enough. Just feed mice roasted coffee beans as their only food (which should keep them alive, shouldn't it?) and see what happens.

Eh, it's not that simple. Whose to say cancer isn't caused by the interaction between coffee and, say, a digestive enzyme in our system or milk or some other factor?

How would anyone ever prove such an interaction in isolation? There are probably millions of chemical compounds present in our bodies and foods and air and water, etc. That would lead to essentially infinite interactions, wouldn't it?

Edit: added--> If what you say is considered, how are carcinogens tested for by the FDA and/or whoever else? What is considered "proof"? I cannot even begin to imagine a method that would be objective under such considerations.

>How would anyone ever prove such an interaction in isolation? There are probably millions of chemical compounds present in our bodies and foods and air and water, etc. That would lead to essentially infinite interactions, wouldn't it?

Fortunately you don't have to try "essentially infinite interactions", only those we are suspectful of.

>"This is why, for example, cocaine is so much worse than natives in the Andes chewing coca leaves, why whiskey is so much worse than alcohol-containing rotten fruit that even bears have been observed to enjoy, etc. etc. etc."

Not worse, just more concentrated and refined to be free from impurities. So in that sense, it's actually safer. But yes, it is easier to overdose on "the pure stuff".

In the case of alcohol, getting rid of the naturally occurring methanol is important. Whisky etc. is just a lot more concentrated ethanol than you'd get from naturally fermented fruits, and it tastes a lot better. And trust me, the bears and other animals still get hangovers :-)

Same with cocaine. You're simply getting a much stronger dose, so the effects are exaggerated, but the active compound itself is not inherently more dangerous. Outside of damage to blood vessels from long term use, the biggest danger comes from adulterants, which can be anything that is cheap and resembles a white powder. You never know what you'll get from a black market supplier.

I don't know. I used cocaine for a pretty brief period in my life and the side effects were pretty severe...although mostly psychological, not so much physical. Perhaps when the leaves are chewed, the combination of various compounds has a different overall effect. Isn't that possible?

It is possible, but I am absolutely not an expert.

When you chew the leaves, you get a lower dose, over a period of time. With cocaine, you get a super concentrated hit, all at once.

To me (again, not an expert) that seems to be the biggest difference.

Cocaine is to coca leaves what heroin is to opium. Different beasts.

> This is why, for example, cocaine is so much worse than natives in the Andes chewing coca leaves

Its a little bit more complex than just that. Cocaine on the streets is mixed/grounded with other (heavier) elements such as glass or washing powder which yields the middleman (dealer) more profit. Since it is lucrative, competition does this as well, and the result is that finding quality cocaine is difficult.

Glass and washing powder? Is anyone out there that evil? I mean, there are countless cheap and benign white powders that can be used.. I've heard some stories, but none as brutal as yours... just...wow.

I've seen articles claiming that cocaine stretched with fentanyl has surfaced.

Yikes. I'd probably say that was laced, rather than stretched - stretching kind of implies dilution with inert material.

Fetanyl is scary stuff

For the curious but lazy like me:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentanyl

Oh yes, and those are just 2 examples (there are less nefarious shit being put into it as well). The Dutch TV program Spuiten & Slikken (about sex & drugs, for youth) covered this in their series. They bought cocaine from the streets and had it analysed in a lab. The outcome wasn't well, purity-wise, although the sample size was IIRC 3.

In general, I recommend users of recreational drugs to test their drugs (especially easy with e.g. XTC/MDMA just buy one extra pill; see below). Here's an example of such a service in The Netherlands (in Dutch) [1]. English webpage (different info but about the same subject) here [2]. The latter is very useful for e.g. tourists in Amsterdam.

EDIT: Would like to add the following from [3]: "In order to test your drug, you need to bring at least one whole pill (logo clearly visible), 100mg of powder, 1 blotter or 2mililitre of fluid"

EDIT: Here's more info available as well [4]

EDIT: And I'd also like to add that contaminated XTC/MDMA has been found; e.g. with PM(M)A or mCPP. When that happens en masse you usually hear about it in the Dutch media.

[1] https://www.jellinek.nl/informatie-over-alcohol-drugs/drugs-...

[2] https://www.jellinek.nl/english/tourists/#drugpotency

[3] https://www.jellinek.nl/vraag-antwoord/why-do-they-test-drug...

[4] https://www.unity.nl/en/themas/testservice/

"Is anyone out there that evil?"

Well, not with cocaine, but the US Government has intentionally poisoned alcohol:

"Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people."[1]

[1] - http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...

Speaking of poison alcohol... don’t use denatured alcohol! Splurge on everclear and use for you cleaning needs. Also and this should be a given but as far as skin care goes don’t put alcohol on your skin. I just discovered that this aloe Vera cream from Walgreens at my friends house has denatured alcohol in it! I threw it away and when they get back to town I’m scolding them! I don’t want my godson having that anywhere near him! The problem is denatured with what? The only reason for denaturing in this day is to avoid taxes, at the cost of real health risks. It’s barbaric that this is still a thing.

Alcohol (ethanol) is often denatured with methanol when sold for purposes other than drinking. This avoids the excise taxes and other restrictions on selling alcohol.

I’m well aware. And methanol is some nasty stuff. Soldering is already toxic enough better to not have your hands soaking in methanol while you’re at it. Having a skin moisturizer with denatured alcohol in it is just crazy to me!

And the only reason for denaturing is carry over laws from prohibition. Anybody whose dealt with addiction in they’re family knows how sinister and terrible alcohol abuse is. But in the most extreme cases denaturing does not deter people from drinking it! So we poison alcohol to pat ourselves on the back? I’m not ok with it, and I think people should be aware of how toxic denatured ethanol with methanol actually is.

Okay but it's extremely different to poison something and announce that you've poisoned it because you don't want anyone drinking it and work hard to keep anyone from drinking it versus poisoning something and then selling it off as high quality, ready to be drunk. The latter is pure evil but the former is at least debatable: alcohol leads to 88000 deaths per year in the US so you could say it might be immoral to not poison it. https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm

The feds got pyrex brand glassware to reformulate so that it explosively shatters if used to cook meth.

I heard this led to the maiming of graduate students that were using pyrex to conserve grant money.

Last I checked, you could still buy the “good stuff” on amazon.

Anyway, that’s one example of US drug enforcement acting with complete disregard to public safety.

This sounds like an urban legend to me. Searching for it doesn't lead me to any credible sources? Especially if you can still get it on Amazon of all places.

In the US pyrex is tempered soda-lime glass.

In Europe PYREX is borosilicate glass.

Tempered soda-lime is better if you drop the object. Borosilicate handles thermal stress better.

I don't think this has anything to do with "The Feds".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrex

Out of curiosity, why the difference? Do Europeans put hot things in their Pyrex more? Or is it a question of differing precursor costs?

Glass and washing powder? Is anyone out there that evil?

Well, yes, they are criminals after all. Look at the history of meth for some truly evil ingredients.

This doesn't make any sense. It's in the financial interest of people selling you addictive drugs not to kill you. "But they are criminal" is no explanation.

You (and I guess the load of downvoters) are making an assumption that drugs is like any other business and not a criminal enterprise[1]. For a lot of drug sellers, it is a customer acquisition game. You give a first sample and then get them addicted and then they spend all their money on the drug and then they are of no use to you. It really doesn't matter if you kill them at some point since they will be out of money anyway. It really is only in the drug dealers financial interest to keep you alive as long as you have money. Adding cheap additives to the product (regardless of the danger) is not really a problem. Adding additives that are even more addictive even if they are very dangerous is a bonus.

1) obviously, some like mj do fit into a normal keep customer happy business model

Nah, the whole “first hit free” thing is mostly bullshit. And dealers don’t want customers dropping dead: that brings the cops down on you like nobody’s business. Sincerely, an ex heroin addict who lived that shitty life for six years.

> Nah, the whole “first hit free” thing is mostly bullshit.

Nope, gotta say that's just a lie in my experience.

> And dealers don’t want customers dropping dead

plenty more saps out there and less witnesses

sincerely, a person who grew up around this stuff on one of those places that gets talked about but ignored

Perhaps it's a different culture thing. Heroin is too expensive in Australia to stuff around with things like that, and there's quite a lot fewer saps. It's very bad for business if someone falls out here.

Might be, it really depends on if law enforcement is willing to look into stuff, and frankly, how nasty and mobile the criminals are. Adding ingredients to heroin would bring the price down, and truth in advertising is not really a big thing among criminals.

This seems like a lot of conjecture.

I grew around this crap, so just fun experience in a sh_tty area. I will say the law enforcement tactic of cutting all internet and cell when they did one of their roundups (strangely missing the biggest drug dealer) was pretty impressive. The helicopters were a nice touch.

>Just feed mice roasted coffee beans as their only food (which should keep them alive, shouldn't it?)

No, why should it? For one, it would lack tons of nutrients.

>and see what happens

Which easily could be a side-effect of only getting coffee beans and not other foods, and not of coffee-bean in itself.

I think the parent comment was employing sarcasm.

Arsenic can be distilled from pokeweed. Anthrax is also completely natural. Lead was always used as a sweetener, also completely natural. It's really time we drop the marketing lingo around 'natural' being somehow superior.

Arsenic trace elements are found in very low quantities in our food as well. That's OK, since its nowhere near LD50.

Another example to add to your list is Botulinum toxin (aka Botox) which is produced by a bacterium; hence "natural".

The "natural" hype is horrible. E-numbers are replaced by vague/different terms causing more complex ingredient lists while the point of them was to make it easier, and all that because of hype.

great, but California needs to stop saying everything causes cancer: https://www.popsci.com/california-coffee-cancer-warning

Agreed. Not even in a curmudgeonly or political "quit trying to ruin things for me, California", sort of way.

Some things are legitimate threats to people's health. Others aren't. Conflating the two as being equally dangerous is no better than conflating the two as being equally innocuous. In both cases we learn to ignore the warnings.

Heck, my wife and I stayed in the historic Westin St. Francis in SF last year. Beautiful hotel, with some amazing history behind it. And, of course, a small plaque at the entrance saying the state of California had determined that the hotel contained some sort of material that was known to cause cancer. Yes, well, thank you state of California, for giving me useless information, that in no way quantified my risk, but just ensured that I continued my practice of ignoring your warnings.

If the plaque concerned asbestos (which is alone responsible for the majority of cases of mesothelioma), it is likely there as a warning to tradespeople called in to perform work on the building. This means the correct precautions can be taken if bonded asbestos might be damaged by the maintenance or construction work carried out.

Which would make sense except it's right by the main entryway, where literally everyone entering from the street will see it.

But that's just it, I don't know. The plaque never says. It just says that the site contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer. Right at visitor eye level.

Unfortunately, the prop 65 warning is everywhere and never lists specific carcinogens. That plaque doesn’t help anyone determine if asbestos is present.

Oh, I see. That does seem quite pointless.

My apartment in California carried the same warning, because it had a chlorinated pool.

California’s cancer warnings are so ubiquitous that they are meaningless. The only thing they do is alarm people new to the area if they aren’t familiar with the proposition.

It's pretty unfortunate, but it's a good example of how a law can do the exact opposite of what it was intended to do unless it's considered carefully, and messaging risk is a non-trivial task in written communication.

I sometimes wish we created more time-bound laws with expirations or phase outs (depending on the particular law). It’s politically more difficult to get a law repealed than passed. If laws that may have unintended consequences could expire on their own (requiring a legislative act for extension), we might have fewer laws like this on the books. Would enough people actually vote to extend this law?

Of course no one wants the law they’re writing to expire because it can’t possibly be a mistake.

The only thing I'd be for in this is renewals on California-style prop systems. Systems that can create problems because they're decoupled from a requirement to answer, "How do we fund this?"

Otherwise, I think the answer to, "How do we make regulation less burdensome while still being effective" can never be, "By making it change even more!"

The most likely basis is that the hotel uses standard cleaning products. Or there might be tobacco smoke near the lounge, aspirin in the medical kits, alcohol at the bar or car exhaust in the parking garage.

The warning signs provide no actionable information to consumers, but businesses can be sued for not having them so virtually all businesses in California just post the sign in self-defense against opportunistic lawyers.

You can look up what chemicals are covered here: https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/proposition-65-list/

I've had to just stop worrying about the generic State of California cancer warnings. Why can't they at least indicate the level of risk and/or the source of the risk?

I have a product that says it does not “INTENTIONALLY” include chemicals “known to the state of California to cause cancer”.

Maple syrup has lead, rice has arsenic, apple seeds have cyanide and bananas contain radioactive potassium-40, soy phytoestrogens can mimic estrogen.

Fava beans are actually dangerous for some males but none of the other foods I mentioned are. Except for anyone like me soy is bad since I have hypothyroidism.

California is going to flip out going from food to food declaring they're dangerous

Why is soy bad because you have hypothyroidism?

There are soy protiens that structurally mimic thyroid hormones and can bind at receptor sites, if I recall correctly.

Last I looked the modern research around soy has shown the estrogen concern to be a myth - along with it reducing testosterone in men. I was initially concerned about this when adding Soylent to my diet since I too had encountered these myths a decade ago and stopped eating soy.

I believe the concern here is most likely goitrogens rather than phytoestrogens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goitrogen

Some years ago there was a product recall and class action here in Australia concerning one of the soy milk brands, with unusually high concentration of iodine.

I wouldn't call phytoestrogens in soy a myth since they are in it. There are quite a few scholarly articles/studies on it I breezed over a few mainly looking for thyroid related problems. But the articles do mention phytoestrogens. Does the myth you mention concern estrogen or phytoestrogens?

There are risks associated with arsenic in rice. I've cut way back on my rice consumption. See [1], from Consumer Reports, for a table with suggested limits for adults and children (rice drinks, rice based cereals, etc.).

[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2015/01/how-muc...

This is confusing. Acrylamide is known to cause cancer, but there's insufficient evidence coffee does?

Also: “The takeaway is that the state is proposing a rule contrary to its own scientific conclusion. That’s unprecedented and bad,” Metzger said. “The whole thing stinks to high hell.”

Acrylamide might cause cancer at very high doses, but the amount that you’ll find in your food is harmless.

So, I'm uneducated in this matter. Let me do a bit of googling, because your comment implies two things

>Acrylamide is known to cause cancer

>Coffee apparently contains (significant) amounts of acrylamide

The first thing I come across, as usual, is Wikipedia [1]. The summary says:

>As of 2018 it is still not clear whether acrylamide consumption affects people's risk of developing cancer.

It provides two sources [2][3], from the Cancer Research UK and the US National Cancer Institute. The abstract of [2] implies that animal studies show some interaction with DNA, but fairly conclusively says:

>[E]vidence from human studies has shown that, for most cancer types, there is no link between acrylamide and cancer risk. Some studies have suggested a higher risk of womb cancer, but the evidence is weak and inconsistent, so we can’t be sure if this link is real.

The other source [3] is a bit of a more informal FAQ style, and poses the question "Is there an association between acrylamide and cancer?" Again, I see the implication of animal studies possibly showing real links between cancer and the substance, yet

>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

Can you explain your comment, and especially the last sentence you provide? My search was extremely cursory, but I would be fairly confident that if it's too strong a claim to say this substance doesn't cause cancer, I could at least conclude that saying

>[T]he state is proposing a rule contrary to its own scientific conclusion

is patently false.

Sources:

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylamide

[2]: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cance...

[3]: https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/d...

This is one of those things where people tend to be willfully ignorant of dose-response curves and exposure thresholds. It's curious that we don't see more folks stress out about eating bananas or green onions given their noticable sums of formaldehyde.

In large quantities, acrylamide probably will cause cancer. It's pretty trace in coffee. Any problems caused by does of caffeine will rapidly overshadow the effect of acrylamide.

The fact it even had to be declared in the first place says a lot about the effectiveness of the local government.

I would still be careful because of lead contamination from expresso machines.

Sounds about as stupid as declaring that pi is 3

but it's fine to let pi be 3.5 https://math.stackexchange.com/a/518830 :)

Burning organic matter and then consuming it to get a little bit of high. Doesn’t that remind you cigarettes?

Sure, you drink it so a bit less harm, but it is sort of obvious it just can’t be good for you.

Actually it reminds me of cooking, not cigaretttes.

It's the process that matters.

WHO says fried, grilled or processed (cured, salted, smoked) _red meat_ probably cause cancer.

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