> To identify a “safe” level of alcohol consumption, valid scientific evidence would need to demonstrate that at and below a certain level, there is no risk of illness or injury associated with alcohol consumption.
The premise of this “no level of consumption is safe” is this requirement to prove 0 risk.
If for instance drinking one glass everyday increases your cancer chances by 0.0000000001%, bringing it to 0. 0000300001%, it would still be considered unsafe, as your chances of cancer increased.
I see the logic, but that isn’t layman‘s categorization of safe or unsafe. And what are the actual base risk of cancer for a healthy individual ?
Taking a base of 60 million death per year, who’s numbers on cancer are of 10 million [0], where death by liver cancer are 830 000, roughly 1%. Given that those don’t all come from alcohol, and to reach that stage requires way more than standard consumption, the base risk feels already pretty low.
All in all, while this article is factual, it turns this facts in such a biased way it feels dogmatic at times. If we’re going to have serious discussions around alcohol, we shouldn’t start them like this.
I think the only time my grandma drank that I know of is a thimble full of wine at church communion a few times a year. Would these scientists have advised her to skip that ceremony?
Which brings up a related question: is the religion part, the transportation to the place of worship, the risk of communicable disease, or the alcohol part the most dangerous in that day?
Yeah. We should. You can smoke a cigar a month and not be considered a smoker by life insurance companies. You can smoke 4 a week and not be considered a smoker by health insurance companies. I’d love to see actual stats because I really enjoy a pipe and am willing to take a slight risk for it.
No level of automobile usage is safe, either, but I know the risks. My chances of dying due to driving (sober) are much higher than my chances of dying due to having a few beers a week.
Are you sure? Because I mentioned that I had smoked one cigar at my high school graduation (which about 3 years before the health insurance interview), and I got demoted from 'preferred plus' to 'preferred' for my life insurance. This was about 20 years ago.'
> Alcohol users really don't like people pointing out that their habit isn't safe.
In my experience that is because people who point that out usually eat all kinds of crap full of sugar and transfats, drink bubbly-sugary drinks (is Coke even better than a good beer?), live in noisy polluted cities and often work themselves to death for status or 3rd car for their family or whatever. But somehow my couple of bottles of beer on weekend is a health emergency and we need to tax it 1000% and only allow to sell if from 9 to 10 am on Mondays or something...
A source of public health information should never say something vague like "cigarettes are bad for your health." They need to specify precisely how bad they are and how much damage is done with each individual cigarette.
Same with gasoline- if someone was to accidentally consume a small quantity of gasoline and wanted to know how much trouble they are in, they should be able to easily discover exactly how many ml of gasoline you need to drink to experience any associated problems. If there is a "safe" level, where there are no major side effects, that's something they need to know.
Because there is such thing as occasional smokers, and having a curve of how much it affects them depending on how much they smoke would be helpful, instead of the generic “just don’t smoke” advice that they are already not following.
If you drank a spoonful of gasoline thinking it was something else, you wouldn’t want your generalist to tell you “that was bad for you” and keep it at that. How bad was it ? what effect should you expect at that dose ?
The real point I think is, a binary safe/unsafe is of no help in this discussion where people have wildly different drinking habits. I mean, even kids will ingest traces of alcohol in cakes, should we ban it from pound cakes ?
What about safe amount of chlorine to drink? Piss?
Chlorine is toxic, and you should not drink it, but tap water has a small amount to ensure to kill al bacterias. We had a cholera epidemic like 30 years ago, and the official recommendation was to add two drops of chlorine to water if you were unsure if it was clean enough. Also swimming pools have chlorine, more than tap water, but you are not suppose to drink too much of it.
A few years ago a moron pissed in a water reservoir and uploaded the video to youtube, so it was an unnecessary public outrage and the water authorities decided to release all the water and fill the reservoir again, as if birds and squirrels use the toilette. Don't ask about swimming pools.
Gasoline? Sometime food has contamination form industrial oil, gasoline and other stuff. It was common to use benzene to remove the natural oil from flour, but I think they changed to another safer solvent. Anyway, there are safety limits for all of that. Zero is very difficult because chromatography is too sensitive.
Cigarette smoking? Probably zero cigarettes is the best, but I remember a silly trend a few years ago about third hand smoke, i.e. how dangerous was to go to a home a few years after someone smoked there and you can still get a small amount of toxic compounds released by the walls contaminated with the smoke.
Asbesto? A single fiber can kill you, but two fibers have like the double of probability to kill you, and a million fibers are even more dangerous. In which case should a building be declared inhabitable?
and yet we do this all the time. Your city probably produces an air quality alert that has some form of ranges; I doubt it says "one particulate of pollution found in the air; stop breathing!".
The premise of this “no level of consumption is safe” is this requirement to prove 0 risk.
If for instance drinking one glass everyday increases your cancer chances by 0.0000000001%, bringing it to 0. 0000300001%, it would still be considered unsafe, as your chances of cancer increased.
I see the logic, but that isn’t layman‘s categorization of safe or unsafe. And what are the actual base risk of cancer for a healthy individual ?
Taking a base of 60 million death per year, who’s numbers on cancer are of 10 million [0], where death by liver cancer are 830 000, roughly 1%. Given that those don’t all come from alcohol, and to reach that stage requires way more than standard consumption, the base risk feels already pretty low.
All in all, while this article is factual, it turns this facts in such a biased way it feels dogmatic at times. If we’re going to have serious discussions around alcohol, we shouldn’t start them like this.
[0] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cancer