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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>Great! But the EPA classified DCPA as a "likely carcinogen" 29 years ago

Is this the same list as the IARC group 2A list, which contains stuff like red meat, hot beverages, and french fries[1]?

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

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Why bring this IARC list up out of the blue? The parent comment mentioned an EPA classification and you brought up a list of IARC classifications. The EPA and IARC frequently disagree on their classifications.

Probably because you don't find a list from the EPA.

The two categories are very similar, they are sort of aimed at the same result but have slightly different criteria. e.g. the EPA considers exposure levels, IARC requires at least some human evidence. So you wouldn't say one is stricter than the other, just different ways of skinning a cat.

Red meat is on IARC 2A: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IARC_group_2A. The IARC is an agency of the World Health Organization, so these lists don't impose any obligations on the FDA.

The parent comment's mention of the IARC list is completely irrelevant. IARC doesn't have anything to do with the EPA.

Edit: Prior to it being edited, the comment I responded to here posed the question to the original IARC comment of whether the EPA could ban red meat due to it classified as a carcinogen by IARC.

Isn't that their point? If the Chemical in question is a carcinogen, but a weak one categorized the same way as other foods like red meat, then it probably isn't going to get banned.

The parent of their comment seems to be confused by how the EPA and IARC are not related, so I don't think they do have a point. Prior to my comment, the comment you responded to originally posed the question of whether the EPA could ban red meat due to it being on IARCs list, before being stealth edited.

I don't think the point was organizational, that decisions by the IARC must be respected by the EPA, but more common sensical: if a substance is roughly equivalent in risk to food, which is ingested, then it surely can't be more harmful to spray it than it is to eat it. That may not hold in all situations, but it doesn't seem crazy as a general principle.

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