Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pbhjpbhj 30 days ago
Are you alleging that California claims stuff to be carcinogenic without evidence?

Do you have a supposed motive?

Any evidence?

Whilst it's a bit of a meme, isn't it just true that a lot of stuff is carcinogenic.

3 comments

California’s threshold is far too low to be useful. The end result is basically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylamide

is the one that gets me. Fried snacks from Asia frequently have a Prop 65 warning. Thing is it is produced by ordinary cooking techniques from ordinary and can be found in both traditional and ultra-processed foods.

Well, the “experts” say a charred steak is carcinogenic. At that point, I stopped listening to anything out of their mouths. It might be true, but it’s also a matter of degree.

California has set such a low threshold that one cannot take their label seriously about anything. It applies to nearly everything, making it effectively a useless warning.

  In the seventies, the view was often expressed to me by lay audiences that there was no point in stopping smoking, since everything was a carcinogen and so ubiquitous as to be unavoidable. This view was certainly pushed by the tobacco companies with the bizarre support of many environmentalists,
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0273230087...

Also see carcinization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation

It also never lists the specific substances nor what one can do about it (not enter the building, don’t lick the ceiling, wear a mask, whatever). Good intentioned but utterly useless.
Pretty much every state, national, and international health or safety organizations deals with possible carcinogens, or sometimes probable carcinogens, because testing to prove something is a carcinogen is expensive.