Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/general-info/proposition...

> By law, a warning must be given for listed chemicals unless exposure is low enough to pose no significant risk of cancer

> the "no significant risk level” is defined as the level of exposure that would result in not more than one excess case of cancer in 100,000 individuals exposed to the chemical over a 70-year lifetime

That feels very strict.

The ink on the label might cause cancer. Shouldn't the cancer label have a label on it?

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If the risk of cancer of the larynx in non-drinkers is 0.0001%, then a 1.4-fold increase means that a moderate drinker has a risk of 0.00014%, an absolute increase of 0.00004%. Instead if it's 20%, then a 1.4-fold increase is 28%, an absolute increase of 8%.

You could potentially extrapolate back from the 3.5% of cancer deaths being "alcohol related", but that gives no context around the related risks of light / moderate / heavy drinking.

What's the oral cavity cancer risk that I'm increasing by 80% if I drink? If it's 10% without alcohol I'll be teetotal. If it's 1/10000 I'm going to ignore the cancer risk.

> One bottle of wine per week is associated with an increased absolute lifetime cancer risk for non-smokers of 1.0% (men) and 1.4% (women). The overall absolute increase in cancer risk for one bottle of wine per week equals that of five (men) or ten cigarettes per week (women). Gender differences result from levels of moderate drinking leading to a 0.8% absolute risk of breast cancer in female non-smokers.

Source: https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...

Legal drugs are usually pushed by huge corporations with big budgets. They have heavy marketing and a lot of advertising that manipulates public opinion. All of this advertising of course portrays the "drug" in a positive way. You don't ever hear the word "drug" used in alcohol or pharmaceutical commercials.

Also, whenever a study comes out saying anything good about alcohol the media picks it up since that's what people like to hear. I'm not sure I've ever seen the news feature a study on the negative effects of alcohol. Another reason the media may focus on positive stories is that big alcohol is such a huge customer.

Any advertisement mentioning illegal drugs portrays them in a negative way since they are put out by groups that are against the drug since you can't promote a product that's illegal. So in conclusion, it's because alcohol is legal and the loads of advertising that give people such a positive view of alcohol.

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/a...

I'd like to have better statistics than this, but they did try to communicate something about the risk.

The problem with comparing the cancer risk to cigarettes is that tobacco does a lot of other bad stuff besides just the cancer - tar, nicotine affect your heart and lungs pretty strongly.

>"Pooled data from 118 individual studies indicates that light drinkers have a slightly increased (1.04-fold higher) risk of breast cancer, compared with nondrinkers. The risk increase is greater in moderate drinkers (1.23-fold higher) and heavy drinkers (1.6-fold higher"

Heavy and moderate drinking at the very least seems to be quite significant. Esophageal cancer is one that also came to my mind because I know of quite a few heavy drinkers who suffered from it, Christopher Hitchens for example.

> A public health analysis published last year estimated that the cancer risk posed by drinking one bottle of wine a week was comparable to smoking five cigarettes for men and 10 for women in the same time span.

Browning on foods is a huge source of flavor though (Maillard reaction I think), is this also a concern? It seems like an occasional steak with thin grill marks could be worth it, but I have no idea where to draw the line on this, compared to something like alcohol, because there is no study for how many grams of burnt food you can eat per week etc.

Every single reaction listed there involves a violently reactive partner: sodium, phosphorus tribromide, concentrated hydrochloric acid, you know, the stuff you ingest daily. Even the esterification needs a strong acid as catalyst.

> carbs are much less dangerous

Fun fact, carbohydrates have multiple alcohol groups and are in fact more reactive than ethanol. They actually react with proteins, even without the help of enzymes, while ethanol doesn't.

Something about your logic doesn't add up.

All food is quite chemically reactive; that is one of the main points of eating.

The 3.6 micron band from the IRAC camera on the Spitzer space telescope has a strong PAH flourescence feature in the band (absorbs UV, emits vibrational mode IR). The 3.6 micron wavelength is commonly colored green in composites, so if you see lots of green nebulosity in images from Spitzer, those are likely mainly PAHS.

That would also include anything acidic and basic, so essentially, any vinegar, baking soda, fruits, ...... Among proteins, there are enzymes that catalyze chemical reactions.

On alcohol and char, I agree. But, the general statement is too broad to be true or useful.

This is a "wet sidewalks cause rain" or "hospital beds are dangerous" type of conclusion.

The reason for belief in the protective effect of alcohol consumption comes from data, not corporate propaganda. Many observational studies, conducted by a wide variety of institutions and government agencies, and consistently arrived at the conclusion that alcohol's effects on all-cause mortality (ACM) are dose-dependent, but these effects do not necessarily converge on the origin. That is, as dosage is reduced, eventually ACM dips >1 for low levels of consumption, before returning to the abstinence baseline. I.e., mild drinking is protective. There is no plausible or coherent way to suggest that these observations were due to industry influence given the wide variety of data sources, investigators, and institutions involved.

The problem with this data is one that is common to wide variety of health issues; it's very hard to observe small effects. Most of our data and understanding actually comes from relatively extreme effects; the worst smokers and drinkers, large radiation exposure, major occupational health risks like asbestos, etc. That gives us great information about the what effects these onslaughts have, but only for these extreme populations.

The next logical step is to observe less dosage/exposure and try to establish the nature of dose-dependence e.g. linear vs. some power law. The problem, however, is that experimentation is unethical, so you have to continue to rely on observational studies. But observational studies necessarily have confounding factors that can be extremely tricky to address. Furthermore, there is no authoritative way to determine whether these factors have been addressed or not.

So, despite the best and most sincere efforts of investigators, the data 'near the origin', i.e. the effects of low dosage/exposure to a potentially harmful thing, is extrapolation, not interpolation as one might believe intuitively. Even small errors - the kind that are endemic to observational studies - are amplified when considering these ranges.

The result of this is persistent controversy about issues broadly related to hormesis. The true impact of radiation releases from events like Chernobyl and famously uncertain for this same reason.

Specifically regarding alcohol, the most recent attempts to control the confounds has lead some to declare that the protective observation has been eliminated. I certainly agree that, as a health recommendation, this is the conservative interpretation and should be taken used to make health decisions. But as far as the data itself is concerned, I'm not so convinced. I still think the "J" shaped dose-response has not been adequately explained, and there are valid mechanistic hypotheses that warrant continued consideration.

But if you would like to carry on a cynical world view that neatly blames all that ails on evil corporations, by all means.

I honestly had no idea there was anything unhealthy about moderate drinking. Every so often we even see dubious headlines about "daily red wine has health benefits". I'm not aware of specific, nor do I particularly believe it's good for you, but I really had no idea that it's unhealthy.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart-disease...

The WHO specifies that it is ethanol in alcoholic beverages that is carcinogenic, i.e. what most people would call alcohol.

It was cancer, obviously.

Cancer risk doesn't care if you spread your seven drinks out over a week or over a night. Moderation might even be a riskier strategy from a cancer risk standpoint, if the imbibed amounts are otherwise the same.