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Comment by downWidOutaFite | Hacker News Reader

This is why I switched from french press to pour overs, it reduces the amount of the shimmery film that ends up in the cup. In my mind if it kills monkey at high dose it has a likelihood of being bad for humans at a low (but daily) dose. The problem is that our scientific tools for studying human toxins are not very good. If it increases the chance of some disease by 1% we probably will never know.

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I think that film is just oils from the coffee beans. Acrylamide is soluble in water, so why would it float on top? Anyway, a single coffee bean is probably enough to kill someone if you grind it up and inject it into the wrong part of them.

So not everything has a perfect linear dose response relationship especially in the body when there are multiple feedback loops that may make things better or worse

Then there is the liver whose job is to filter out said toxins. It might not be able to do it's job if the concentration is 1000x but at 1x it should be fine(assuming the liver can recognize and clear the toxin in the first place)

You are right that we cannot reliably detect an increase in 1% risk but if the initial overall risk was just 0.5% does that increase even meaningfully contribute to anything?

The risk reduction of your actions might be more like putting a helmet on while driving and less like checking your straps before BASE jumping.

I haven’t checked lately, as cars have become better at crashing, but it was my understanding that putting on a helmet while driving/riding in a car is actually a really good idea, as car accidents are a leading(#2 in the below report, after falling) cause of head trauma.

Here is a link supporting that idea: https://www.brainandspinalcord.org/motor-vehicle-accident/

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