Every day, I make my wife two or three cups of coffee. I am serving her a phenol-laced liquid, containing 826 volatile chemical substances, 16 of which are known by the state of California to cause cancer. One cup of this hot and astoundingly delicious pick-me-up contains at least 10 milligrams of known carcinogens including: caffeic acid, catechol, furfural, hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide.[1]

Should I be arrested for spousal abuse?

In one cup of coffee, my wife, and I, take in more toxins and carcinogens than we would from one year’s worth of pesticide residue on fruits and vegetables.[2]


Consider the lowly potato, organically grown or conventionally grown matters not a whit. It is not sexy but it is filling and nutritious. It provides three times the calories per acre of rye or wheat and it is easy to grow. Yet, “the potato is a regular Chernobyl among vegetables,” P. J. O’Rourke wrote in his 1994 book, All the Trouble in the World, “Within the dread spud we find solanine, chaconine, amylase inhibitors, and isonavones—which, respectively, cause gastrointestinal-tract irritation, harm your nervous system, interfere with digestive enzymes, and mimic female sex-hormone activity." He puts his tongue in his cheek and points out: "An extra helping of au gratin and you’re a toilet-bound neurasthenic hermaphrodite with gas. If you live that long. Potatoes also contain arsenic.”


Researchers apply the



A couple of year's back (in the original Peet’s Coffeehouse in Berkeley) I stood behind a woman quizzing the barista why Peet’s used chemicals to produce its decaffeinated coffee.
The barista assured her the levels of the chemicals used were too low to be of concern (because “Dose makes the poison”). I butted in that coffee already has 16 chemicals known to be carcinogenic; why worry about the minuscule amount of synthetic ones. She frowned at me.



[2] Dr. Bruce Ames, Reason Magazine, Of Mice and Men (http://reason.com/archives/1994/11/01/of-mice-and-men/singlepage)
[3] Ames writes in Spiked.com, “The main rule in toxicology is that ‘the dose makes the poison‘. At some level, every chemical becomes toxic, but there are safe levels below that.
It was also assumed that:
3. carcinogens were likely to be synthetic industrial chemicals.
[4] Ibid
[5] http://learn.caim.yale.edu/chemsafe/references/dose.html
[6] http://www.amazon.com/Elenco-Electronics-Inc-EDU-7075-Chem/dp/B002MR05HM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308866720&sr=8-1