An article by John Luik on TechCentralStation November 2, 2005 noted the opposition of ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan to California Attorney General Bill Lockyer's crusade against foods containing acrylamide:
Lockyer claims that acrylamide is a "potent cancer-causing chemical." Now there are two quite extraordinary things about this claim: one is what it doesn't say and two is that even though it is his central argument, he provides no evidence to support it. First, notice what Lockyer is not saying. He isn't claiming that acrylamide causes cancer in human beings. Instead he is claiming that it causes cancer and is found in human food. For the hurried reader or the inattentive listener, these come out as the same thing, but they are not. Acrylamide causes cancer and acrylamide causes human cancer through food are not at all the same thing.
The attorney general has conflated two quite separate points. The difference is crucial since, as Elizabeth Whelan of the American Council on Science and Health has pointed out, there is a difference between causing cancer and causing cancer in humans through their food. She writes that "If we were to label every food containing something that causes cancer in rodents, few foods would be spared."
There is evidence that acrylamide causes cancer in lab rats, but the risk is significant only at lifetime doses of 500 micrograms per kilogram of rat body weight, according to Joseph Levitt, Director of the FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.
