These notices are ineffective to say the least. Saying “everything causes cancer” is pointless because it ignores the key questions of “how often?” and “with what severity?”
Or maybe they are extremely effective, because the purpose is for the companies who sell REAL cancer inducing chemicals to muddy the waters so they can keep doing business.
Product warning labels are indeed subject to all manners of nonscientific meddling, often with a barely disguised goal of protecting a powerful industry. History is not usually kind when evaluating these kinds of compromises made to appease powerful corporations.
And now, a short conversation between two people to illustrate the rhetoric in play:
Person 1: “Let the market handle that; it will innovate and adapt to customer needs!”
Person 2: “Except the top three players in that industry are quite profitably killing people.”
Person 1: “But how can the industry recover if we act too drastically?”
Person 2: I will quote what you said just above: <<Let the market handle that; it will innovate and adapt to customer needs!>> You were just saying that the market is adaptable! It seems like you are conflating the idea of protecting bad actors with the idea of setting the conditions for a healthy market. A healthy market does not kill its consumers.
And if something was truly dangerous then I hope they would ban it outright rather than stick a label on it. Especially when they have been sticking those same labels everywhere.
The IARC lists do not answer these two questions on their own either, but with the "evidence level" groups there's at least some separation from alcohol down to aspartame. These levels are still insufficient for at-a-glance risk assessment: putting mustard gas and alcohol both at level 1 can send you into a bit of a spin until you realize what the grouping is about.