[pifm_guy]

There are undoubtedly more things like this waiting to be discovered.

Killing large numbers of people 'statistically' is easy when nobody can identify a direct cause for any individual death. See: air pollutants.

I worry that data privacy laws will slow down the discovery of things like this.

Imagine for example that supermarkets could have said 'oh look, the people that buy this selection of products have a higher chance of hospital admission'.

Except now it's practically illegal for a supermarket (who has product data) do join that with medical records at any reasonable scale. And if you do a study of just a few thousand volunteers, you won't discover something like 'this floor cleaner brand shortens users lifespan by 1 year'.

Instead the problem goes undetected, and tens of thousands or millions die early.