[jessriedel]

The point isn't that the amount of cancer caused is literally zero. Just by chance, everything will have some (generally infinitesimal) effect on cancer, and often it will be positive. The question is whether "causes cancer" is being applied to products that cause amounts of cancer that are so small that it's not worth warning people about. That consumer products and businesses are covered in these warning and few people take them seriously is prima facie evidence that this is the case, but you'd have to dig into the numbers to be sure.

For instance, Wikipedia:

> The requirements apply to amounts above what would present a 1-in-100,000 risk of cancer assuming lifetime exposure (for carcinogens)

Using the standard ~$5M statistical value of life, this mean that you need to label a product if it is estimated to impose the equivalent of $50 in costs if someone is regularly exposed to the chemical over an entire lifetime. I'm not sure what frequency of exposure is being assumed here, but naively that means that if I use the product once a week, it requires notification of about 2 cents worth of harm per usage.

[imtringued]

You're not going to get more customers by labeling your product with "99% less cancerous than what the standard requires" next to the warning that it causes cancer.

[LorenPechtel]

No--it's based on the risk to someone who uses it a lot. Even if it's a product they're not going to use a lot.

[jessriedel]

I don't think we disagree?