
After coffee brewhaha, CA fears cancer warnings have “gone seriously wrong” - okket
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/08/after-coffee-brewhaha-ca-fears-cancer-warnings-have-gone-seriously-wrong/
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tynpeddler
The most important tenet of toxicology is that "the dose makes the toxin." In
high enough doses, everything is toxic, and in low enough doses, everything is
safe. Toxic warning labels that are not informed by good dose-response
information are worse than useless. They create noise that consumers must wade
through in order to discover if a product is truly a risk.

One of the worst examples of chemical paranoia that I've encountered in my
career were the MSDS guidelines. The MSDS for water has an exhausting list of
dangers and precautions. This made it much more difficult to assess the danger
posed by other chemicals because they frequently had the exact same warnings
as water. When everything is "dangerous", nothing is.

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JudasGoat
I didn't see anything scary or FUDlike in the Water MSDS.
[http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9927321](http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9927321)

~~~
tynpeddler
I think my memory inflated things a bit, but I usually check MSDS for personal
protection and waste disposal. Both entries for a water are a little vague and
overly cautious.

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LinuxBender
Here is one write-up on the topic [1]. In full disclosure, I am addicted to
caffeine and prefer to get it from good tasting coffee.

[1] - [https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/coffee-and-cancer-what-
th...](https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/coffee-and-cancer-what-the-research-
really-shows.html)

