So, had a quick fun look at the California coffee/cancer claim and it's even sillier than you might imagine Follow this thread if you want to laugh at numbers
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You see, the rats in the original studies that I linked above were getting quite a lot of acrylamide
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The lowest amounts where cancer was detected are about 1 mg/kg. Extrapolating to the average(ish) 75kg adult human, that's 75mg
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How much acrylamide is in your coffee? The CDC has some figures from the early noughties that put it at ~300ppb (parts per BILLION)pic.twitter.com/hJFJYN25L1
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That means that every gram of dry coffee beans has ~roughly~ 0.0000003 grams of acrylamide in it
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Now, brewed coffee probably has even less. But let's take that 0.0000003 grams as the figure that you'd find per milliliter of coffee
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Let's do the maths on this 75mg figurehttps://twitter.com/GidMK/status/981328016176328704 …
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The 0.0000003 grams figure converts to 0.0003 milligrams 75/0.0003 = 250,000 That means that using this estimate, you'd have to drink 250,000ml of coffee to get 75mg of acrylamide
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250,000ml is 250 LITERS of coffee For reference, that's about 500 cups That is A LOT OF COFFEE
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I haven't even gotten to the best part yet: THIS IS A DAILY DOSEhttps://twitter.com/GidMK/status/981328016176328704 …
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To get the amount of acrylamide FROM COFFEE that this court suggested is possibly a problem, you'd have to drink 500 cups a day I would humbly suggest that this is probably impossible
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P.S. here's the source for those CDC figures. The important note is that it depends on which coffee brand you pick, but since I used one of the highest readings it doesn't make much difference anywayhttps://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodborneIllnessContaminants/ChemicalContaminants/ucm053549.htm …
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P.P.S. the other important thing to remember is that acrylamide is found in most cooked starchy foods so you could potentially get dangerous amounts if you eat a lot of burned things but the claims from California are specifically about coffee not all food
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P.P.P.S forgot to mention that coffee contains caffeine, which in doses of as little as 50 cups is enough to kill you so "probably impossible" is generous here
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Final note: this thread doesn't talk about skin exposure to acrylamide, which is different. But unless people are rubbing thousands of cups of coffee on their skin each day, I reckon we're alright there too
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End of conversation
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