3 ms·

Chocolate (Theobromine), Coffee (caffeine) and Candies (Xylitol) can kill a dog [0]. That doesn't indicate that they are bad for humans, so I would be careful t

Chocolate (Theobromine), Coffee (caffeine) and Candies (Xylitol) can kill a dog [0]. That doesn't indicate that they are bad for humans, so I would be careful to draw conclusions. It is called "canary in the coal mine" because birds are extremely sensitive to gases, luckily we aren't. [0] https://www.webmd.com/pets/dogs/ss/slideshow-foods-your-dog-should-never-eat https://www.webmd.com/pets/dogs/ss/slideshow-foods-your-dog-...

betenoire 3y ago
Don't forget that the canary in the coal mine is signal that you are about to get it, too.
- edejong 3y ago
  On point
- MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
  How often did you have chocolate poisoning? The point is to have an early warning in a situation where gas concentration potentially increases from harmless to dangerous levels, as in a mine shaft, where ventilation is limited. Something that is harmful in low doses to a bird isn't necessarily so to us, until it is too late, which makes the bird useful as an early warning signaller so people can get out early when the dose is still harmless and thus not easily detectable. Thus the saying "the dose makes the poison".
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    > How often did you have chocolate poisoning? Caffeine overdoses are too common among people and I've known friends that have died or almost died from them. (I'm strongly on the never side for caffeine pill usage as the risk of an OD from coffee is much lower and involves a lot more liquid sitting on your bladder.) Theobromine in chocolate (and tea and other places) is a Caffeine relative that in us humans has a 1/10th to 1/100th the efficacy on our caffeine receptors. In dogs that relationship is reversed and theobromine is their caffeine and death by chocolate is their caffeine overdose. People can overdose on theobromine too, it just takes much higher quantities still than caffeine. Which yes, aligns with your point that doses matter, but the other thing useful thing to note about the Theobromine/Caffeine relationship is that subtly different but related chemicals have wildly different effects on different metabolisms. It's not just dose that matters, but also exploring the repercussions of entire families of chemicals (and the products they break down into) because you also need to know if a "cousin" chemical has larger efficacy at lower doses in people. (Results on small animals are still an early warning sign, the directions they may warn about aren't just exposure time or dosage amount, but also related chemicals and receptor paths and many other things.)
    - MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
      We are in agreement then - the dose makes the poison, and animals reacting much more sensitively than humans doesn’t mean we can’t safely consume something, since at some point, everything is a poison, be it water or oxygen.
0xEF 3y ago
Isn't this a false equivelance fallacy? Genuine question, I am not an expert on fallacies. In any case, would it not be safer to assume the possibility of harmful impact of Chemical X until more concrete data is gathered? Granted, the fear mongering in the media needs to pump the brakes, but err on the side of caution, and all that. Then again, where does the burden of proof lie; on PFAS not being harmful? That doesn't sound right either. Bit of a headache, I guess.
- MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
  Thinking of poisons in binaries is false - the dose makes the poison. You are eating "poisons" every day, and it is impossible not to. Plants create poisons to defend their seeds against herbivores, but you don't die when eating nuts or grains, because your body has adapted. Water will kill you if you drink too much of it. So the question is not "is this a poison", but "at what dose is this a poison". You could argue that with food, there is a necessary trade-off, but with PFAS there isn't, because we don't need it to survive. But that is true for most of modern civilisation, and what you then end up with is the "this substance is known to the state of California to cause cancer" on basically everything. You are right that this becomes a difficult problem of epistemology. Basically, it is impossible to prove "this is safe", only the opposite, and often it is not easy to prove conclusively. I'm not sure where the right balance lies, either.
  - ramblenode 3y ago
    > Thinking of poisons in binaries is false - the dose makes the poison. This is true, but by itself this model presents an incomplete picture for assessing the risk of PFAS. Two additional models are important: bioaccumulation and half-life. PFAS stick around (pardon the pun) in the environment. They are biomagnified upwards through the food chain. If we are releasing them into the environment at a greater rate than they are degrading, then the biosphere is building up a reservoir of PFAS whose acute effects in humans will lag their release into the environment. Additionally, it is hard to assess the lethal dose of something over a lifespan vs. an acute exposure. This is because slow poisons tend to pick up correlations and interactions with other illnesses as they progress over time (e.g. someone who struggles to get out of bed because of a persistent infection will also get less exercise and sunlight). So the long-term effects of things on the body tend to be less tractable research questions and thus have a negative bias in the scientific literature, which can easily be mistaken for "evidence of absence". This is why the precautionary principle is important for anything that is as pervasive as PFAS.

betenoire 3y ago

Don't forget that the canary in the coal mine is signal that you are about to get it, too.

edejong 3y ago
On point
MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
How often did you have chocolate poisoning? The point is to have an early warning in a situation where gas concentration potentially increases from harmless to dangerous levels, as in a mine shaft, where ventilation is limited. Something that is harmful in low doses to a bird isn't necessarily so to us, until it is too late, which makes the bird useful as an early warning signaller so people can get out early when the dose is still harmless and thus not easily detectable. Thus the saying "the dose makes the poison".
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  > How often did you have chocolate poisoning? Caffeine overdoses are too common among people and I've known friends that have died or almost died from them. (I'm strongly on the never side for caffeine pill usage as the risk of an OD from coffee is much lower and involves a lot more liquid sitting on your bladder.) Theobromine in chocolate (and tea and other places) is a Caffeine relative that in us humans has a 1/10th to 1/100th the efficacy on our caffeine receptors. In dogs that relationship is reversed and theobromine is their caffeine and death by chocolate is their caffeine overdose. People can overdose on theobromine too, it just takes much higher quantities still than caffeine. Which yes, aligns with your point that doses matter, but the other thing useful thing to note about the Theobromine/Caffeine relationship is that subtly different but related chemicals have wildly different effects on different metabolisms. It's not just dose that matters, but also exploring the repercussions of entire families of chemicals (and the products they break down into) because you also need to know if a "cousin" chemical has larger efficacy at lower doses in people. (Results on small animals are still an early warning sign, the directions they may warn about aren't just exposure time or dosage amount, but also related chemicals and receptor paths and many other things.)
  - MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
    We are in agreement then - the dose makes the poison, and animals reacting much more sensitively than humans doesn’t mean we can’t safely consume something, since at some point, everything is a poison, be it water or oxygen.

0xEF 3y ago

Isn't this a false equivelance fallacy? Genuine question, I am not an expert on fallacies. In any case, would it not be safer to assume the possibility of harmful impact of Chemical X until more concrete data is gathered? Granted, the fear mongering in the media needs to pump the brakes, but err on the side of caution, and all that. Then again, where does the burden of proof lie; on PFAS not being harmful? That doesn't sound right either. Bit of a headache, I guess.

MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
Thinking of poisons in binaries is false - the dose makes the poison. You are eating "poisons" every day, and it is impossible not to. Plants create poisons to defend their seeds against herbivores, but you don't die when eating nuts or grains, because your body has adapted. Water will kill you if you drink too much of it. So the question is not "is this a poison", but "at what dose is this a poison". You could argue that with food, there is a necessary trade-off, but with PFAS there isn't, because we don't need it to survive. But that is true for most of modern civilisation, and what you then end up with is the "this substance is known to the state of California to cause cancer" on basically everything. You are right that this becomes a difficult problem of epistemology. Basically, it is impossible to prove "this is safe", only the opposite, and often it is not easy to prove conclusively. I'm not sure where the right balance lies, either.
- ramblenode 3y ago
  > Thinking of poisons in binaries is false - the dose makes the poison. This is true, but by itself this model presents an incomplete picture for assessing the risk of PFAS. Two additional models are important: bioaccumulation and half-life. PFAS stick around (pardon the pun) in the environment. They are biomagnified upwards through the food chain. If we are releasing them into the environment at a greater rate than they are degrading, then the biosphere is building up a reservoir of PFAS whose acute effects in humans will lag their release into the environment. Additionally, it is hard to assess the lethal dose of something over a lifespan vs. an acute exposure. This is because slow poisons tend to pick up correlations and interactions with other illnesses as they progress over time (e.g. someone who struggles to get out of bed because of a persistent infection will also get less exercise and sunlight). So the long-term effects of things on the body tend to be less tractable research questions and thus have a negative bias in the scientific literature, which can easily be mistaken for "evidence of absence". This is why the precautionary principle is important for anything that is as pervasive as PFAS.