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Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

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Re: Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

#161

Post by nikolay »

08-15 wrote: post #153
snazz wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about cancer risk here, not toxicity or effects on blood sugar. As far as I understand (as someone with no medical background), exposure is exposure. I'd love to be proven wrong if someone has some information to the contrary.

> exposure is exposure Because damage to DNA adds up, and that's what causes cancer, right? Turns out, DNA is constantly being repaired, because it constantly suffers chemical insults, mostly from reactive oxygen species. A carcinogen is dangerous once it overwhelms these repair mechanisms, and for that, it clearly makes a difference whether you take a single large dose or many small ones.

And that's why hormesis works and explains a variety of phenomena that small amounts of disruptions is good to keep your mechanisms ready to take on challenges.

Re: Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

#162

Post by xtracto »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #76
35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious, so I googled: https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/general-info/proposition... > By law, a warning must be given for listed chemicals unless exposure is low enough to pose no significant risk of cancer > the "no significant risk level” is defined as the level of exposure that would result in not more than one excess case of cancer in 100,000 individuals exposed to the chemical over a 70-year lifetime Th…

Yes, prop 65 is absurd. Pro 65 among other things requires labels on: * Parking garages * French fries - https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-acrylamide-warni... (This sign is real; the McDonald's by my house has one) * Toast * Seaweed * Coffee has been a battleground: https://www.consumerproductslawblog.com/2019/06/what-now-cal... * Sand You would be hard pressed to find something that prop 65 does not requir…

Ooooh so that is the reason of all the crazy Cancer warnings that I see in California when I go. I remember at some point while boarding an airplane in California that I saw some cancer sign in the worm-aisle (what's the name in English?) that you pass while boarding

Re: Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

#163

Post by ogre_codes »

SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #158
35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Process engineers know this as "alarm fatigue": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue And it's a real thing. It kills people in hospitals because nurses tune out the constant beeps of machines.

Yep, that's what I thought you/they meant. I'm glad you admitted it, because it is clearly a matter of opinion, and it seems the only people bothered by this have similar political affiliations (if their post history is any indicator).

I think you are commingling "Think it should be fixed" with "Think it should be trashed entirely". I like the idea of warning labels. I don't like that they are currently not very good at communicating what is actually dangerous. That doesn't mean I want to get rid of them, it means I want them improved.

Re: Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

#164

Post by eganist »

kevinskii wrote: post #137
dekhn wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree for a simple reason: while liberty is a great goal, if the liberty comes at a cost to the commons, it needs to be restricted. For example, as much as I'd love to let people chose to smoke and die of cancer, smoking affects a lot more than just the smoker. Alcohol DUIs leads to many driving deaths.

The OP suggested that risk shouldn't be communicated in absolute terms because people can't be trusted to make sound decisions. Presumably it's therefore better to only share relative risk numbers, which are almost always more frightening. That's what I was responding to. I probably agree with most of your views on personal liberty versus the common good, but I think it's tangential to the original point about risk c…

> The OP suggested that risk shouldn't be communicated in absolute terms because people can't be trusted to make sound decisions. Presumably it's therefore better to only share relative risk numbers, which are almost always more frightening.

That's not actually what I said, but I love your reasoning, so I'll adopt it.

Why:

> The goal shouldn't be to get people to do what you want. It should be to give them sufficient information so they can make an informed decision on their own, even if you might disagree with it.

How much information do you figure that'll require? Because our perception of how much is probably the difference between your perspective and mine.

Re: Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

#165

Post by p1esk »

dalke wrote: post #156
p1esk wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this risk proportional to the strength of the alcohol you consume? I imagine a shot of 40% whiskey would be much worse for your throat than a bottle of 5% beer, despite the same total amount of alcohol.

https://monographs.iarc.fr/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/mono96... > Epidemiological evidence indicates that drinking alcoholic beverages is causally related to cancer of the oesophagus. There is no indication that the effect of alcoholic beverage consumption is dependent on the type of beverage

Interesting, thanks!

Re: Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

#166

Post by aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #102
csours wrote: post #17

I bought a large mixing bowl, and it had a California Cancer label on the bottom. It's a regular metal bowl. If you put cancer labels on everything, people will quickly ignore them. Maybe it would be better if there was a scale on it, like this is a 1 banana equivalent risk or something, but then how do you determine my exposure to the cancer in the metal bowl.

There's no penalty for putting the label on a product that has none of the substances in it. But the penalty for not putting the label on something that does end up having a carcinogen in it is very high. So it's really in the best interest of the manufacturer to just put the label on it anyway.

This is precisely the situation.

Re: Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

#167

Post by trav4225 »

easton wrote: post #88
throwaway09223 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, prop 65 is absurd. Pro 65 among other things requires labels on: * Parking garages * French fries - https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-acrylamide-warni... (This sign is real; the McDonald's by my house has one) * Toast * Seaweed * Coffee has been a battleground: https://www.consumerproductslawblog.com/2019/06/what-now-cal... * Sand You would be hard pressed to find something that prop 65 does not requir…

The most comical one of these I know of is Disneyland’s, which I can only assume to be warning about cancerous IP law ;) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Disneyla...

Every apartment building I've lived at in recent memory has one of these signs at the entrance.

Re: Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

#168

Post by trav4225 »

aphextron wrote: post #65
tehjoker wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that was the idea. If the warnings were effective, then business processes are affected. If consumers can be trained to ignore them, then the state looks like it's doing something for people without changing anything materially.

> then the state looks like it's doing something for people without changing anything materially. You've just described California politics perfectly.

s/California politics/politics/g

Re: Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

#170

Post by 35fbe7d3d5b9 »

SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #158
35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Process engineers know this as "alarm fatigue": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue And it's a real thing. It kills people in hospitals because nurses tune out the constant beeps of machines.

Yep, that's what I thought you/they meant. I'm glad you admitted it, because it is clearly a matter of opinion, and it seems the only people bothered by this have similar political affiliations (if their post history is any indicator).

Mate, going by politics alone I'd wager "those people" would write my opinions off – I'd get called a filthy statist at best, and if they only knew what I really believed... ;)

But I think you've got this wrong. I absolutely want to know what my exposure is to carcinogens, but in the absence of context it isn't helpful. Very few people are equipped to understand and evaluate the real risks they face – and I count myself in this bucket. That's why regulations and governments are a good thing. That's why I want meaningful warning labels that indicate what risks I face over time, not just "there's a carcinogen here".

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