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michal_hanu_la t1_jdcmyw2 wrote

Amount / concentration / dose matters.

Always.

We are, after all, not Californians.

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michal_hanu_la t1_jdcne3o wrote

Under some threshold it makes no difference to your life or to your total exposure to lead.

In practice there is no such thing as 0.

With Hersheys I would be much more worried about your life being made worse by eating bad chocolate.

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ausdoug t1_jdcq81h wrote

I'd rather eat a block of cadmium than Hershey's

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wrongseeds t1_jdcrl9j wrote

Hershey’s sucks. Years ago they petitioned congress to allow them to reduce the amount cocoa butter allowed in chocolate. That’s when their candy started tasting like wax. And I stopped eating it.

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Amazingawesomator t1_jdcut8j wrote

The threshold that is safe for human consumption when it comes to lead is zero. Yes, there is a threshold - it is 0.

No amount of lead is safe for human consumption. The amount of lead the FDA allows in food is to allow companies to sell you lead and make money, not because it is healthy.

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michal_hanu_la t1_jdcwi73 wrote

> The threshold that is safe for human consumption when it comes to lead is zero. Yes, there is a threshold - it is 0.

That sound wrong, please do elaborate. What is your definition of safe? Do you have any source for the safe level, matching your definition?

Notice I am not saying lead is healthy, I am saying there is some level below which it is not unhealthy enough to warrant regulation.

And if you consider chocolate, what is the difference it makes to your total amount of lead?

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tugrumpler t1_jdcyylz wrote

I recall them petitioning to allow the name Chocolate on stuff because it tasted like chocolate even though it didn’t contain any chocolate. They lost iirc. Hersheys lost in my estimation and food regulation won.

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sndtrb89 t1_jdcz5fd wrote

its probably being uptaken by the soil of their humanitarian nightmare plantations

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BirdsbirdsBURDS t1_jdd95nt wrote

Heavy metal poisoning is a thing, FYI. It’s why mercury concentrations in fish are a problem in the east. Lead is no exception. It builds up in your system because your body can’t eliminate it. “Some lead exposure” is fine, kind of like getting stabbed once or twice is ok, except the cumulation limit is lifetime, rather than over a few minutes.

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Xbalanque_ t1_jddbzpg wrote

They need to make sure removing the heavy metals wont destabilize the wax that makes up %40 of the "chocolate" bar.

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sprint6864 t1_jddd8mr wrote

I literally made a comment in the thread about Skittles how idiots like this argue that it's their right to be poisoned, and we shouldn't care about removing harmful chemicals where we can

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sprint6864 t1_jddde0v wrote

The problem isn't just aimed at consumers eating the food, but the workers exposed to the chemicals. Anyone arguing this is a bad thing is only upset because they snack on lead paint chips

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gtacleveland t1_jddezmg wrote

You can mandate what a specific amount, but you cannot ensure that something is 100% free of a certain chemical or defect or contamination. You can only mitigate the problem to an accepted level, whether that is set by a customer or mandated by the government. I would know, I'm an engineer who deals with quality control in a factory every damn day.

−3

gtacleveland t1_jddh0ev wrote

Are you stupid or do you not understand statistics? You can mandate a company guarantee their products be 99% free of contamination, or 99.9% free, or even as high 99.99999% free. But you can never guarantee something be 100% free of contamination. There is always risk. The best you can do is mandate a product be within safe limits. In the real world you can get functionally close to 0% or 100% but you can never achieve them.

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gtacleveland t1_jddk1iu wrote

No shit Sherlock, of course there shouldn't be any. But it is not physically or statistically possible to be 100% free of it. What do you not understand about this? There is no absolutes. Hell the human body naturally has lead and plutonium and other heavy metals in it. The difference is that there is an acceptable amount that won't harm you.

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gtacleveland t1_jddm7hz wrote

I understand that you moron. I'm saying it is not physically possible for any product to have 0% lead content, ie, be 100% lead free.

You yourself are not lead free. You were born with lead in your body. You will die with it in your body, and hopefully it never reaches a concentration that does serious harm to your body.

I don't understand what you don't get.

1

Ash-SeedMustDie t1_jddox6b wrote

https://www.fda.gov/food/environmental-contaminants-food/lead-food-foodwares-and-dietary-supplements#:~:text=While%20it%20is%20not%20possible,to%20chemical%20hazards%E2%80%94including%20lead.

"While it is not possible to prevent or remove lead entirely from foods, the levels in food can be reduced. By law, food manufacturers have a responsibility to implement controls as needed to significantly minimize or prevent exposure to chemical hazards—including lead."

This is why nearly everything in California has the Prop 65 warning on it. People are correct that having no lead would be preferable but its literally not possible currently.

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michal_hanu_la t1_jde168m wrote

Yes, people keep saying that, but you have some distribution of lead levels across population and getting from 10th to 12th percentile is probably fine.

Clearly lots of people eat chocolate. Do you observe any ill effects?

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Pearse_Borty t1_jdeg6m4 wrote

And yet they still cant eliminate that god awful vomit-tasting chemical

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Icy_Associate8487 t1_jdekfxi wrote

I ain't eating this s*** until all metals are gone, and they can prove completely with thorough testing that the machines have been properly cleaned and don't add metals.

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SomebodyInNevada t1_jdenbjw wrote

If they actually mandated zero then there would be no food for sale. Zero is unattainable.

The basic problem is that it's in the environment, the plants pick it up as they grow. Depending on the product it might be possible to remove some of it, it will never be possible to remove all of it.

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broad5ide t1_jdet66a wrote

People drank from disgusting water supplies back in the middle ages without consequences all the time. That doesn't mean that there weren't consequences to inadequate water supply maintenance.

−3

bishop3200 t1_jdeui4s wrote

I always loved their cadmiumbury cream eggs.

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gerkletoss t1_jdeuo9m wrote

>The threshold that is safe for human consumption when it comes to lead is zero.

Source? And definition of safe?

I'm not saying that the level of Hershey's chocolate is unacceptable, because I don't know, but clearly absolute zero is not possible.

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CobaltSpellsword t1_jdewa0x wrote

But how else will I be able to enjoy my Cadmium Creme Eggs this Easter??? /s

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gerkletoss t1_jdez8dz wrote

>There is no level of exposure to lead that is known to be without harmful effects.

Do you see how that's a difference sentence from what you said?

Do you see how how every country on earth allows a small but non-zero amount of lead in good because zero is impossible?

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michal_hanu_la t1_jdeznwp wrote

That is, however, impossible. Some things contain lead. Including cocoa. Even if you stop eating chocolate, you have other sources of lead.

So the question becomes which of those will you focus on? I suggest those that, when eliminated, would make a substantial difference to your total exposure.

Is chocolate one of those? I doubt it.

Also, "realistic", when applied to amounts of chocolate one eats, is not that relative.

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Dubya_t t1_jdf0b4x wrote

The Chief Financial Officer is clearly the individual who should be making this call.

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michal_hanu_la t1_jdf0xsn wrote

Not sure what you're quoting, sounds like The Simpsons, but if most of the population drinks from the cistern every day and we do not notice it causing any trouble, maybe the cistern is mostly fine?

And this is the kind of trouble that we seem to be looking for?

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ICLazeru t1_jdf5tkq wrote

Hell...so not only are they probably the worst chocolate on the market, it's straight up poison too?

−1

michal_hanu_la t1_jdf62j0 wrote

I'm not your buddy and you keep forgetting the dose.

Chocolate fits that description, even though we know it contains very small amounts of lead. Mostly any chocolate, the darker, the more.

You can stop eating chocolate, of course, but it does not seem to cause any trouble that we would actually know of.

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GlassWasteland t1_jdf8527 wrote

WTF? When did Hershey's outsource their "chocolate" to China?

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michal_hanu_la t1_jdf8u0s wrote

As much chocolate, you mean.

Notice I am not saying you should g drinking 100LL. I am saying that lead from chocolate almost definitely won't be what kills you, or even produces any noticeable effects.

I am also saying that learning to distinguish between those two things is important and you should consider it.

(Also, the "help and support" silliness gets old very fast. Don't do that.)

1

jmgloss t1_jdfbs0m wrote

Did you know that there are rat droppings in your food? You'd want 0% of that, if asked. Seems like an easy thing to just say: "no rat droppings in food, please." But there are still rat droppings in food. Why is that?

−2

Dyne313 t1_jdfknp9 wrote

Who the fuck eats Hershey?

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TrackRelevant t1_jdgj61r wrote

Hershey evaluation then showed that they can eliminate it but that they don't want to. Because money and who do you think you are, I am

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michal_hanu_la t1_jdgqsr1 wrote

I get that logic, but there is a dose at which, over a lifetime, they do not accumulate to a dangerous level.

There is also a dose which, when added or removed, does not make a difference compared to all the other sources.

Edit: One should also take into account that most people naturally stop eating chocolate before the age of 120. Now, question is, what is such a dose and how often do we see people getting dangerous cumulative amounts of heavy metals from chocolate?

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ToxicAdamm t1_jdhh55q wrote

The title is a bit misleading because we are only talking about two very niche Hershey products. Special Dark and 85 percent cocao bars. Some people ITT seem to make the leap that it's the iconic milk chocolate bar.

Which makes sense, since that (the darkest varieties) is a less processed chocolate. Also, it being done in Africa, a place where leaded gas is still being used (until recently), means that it was likely absorbing it through the air as they dried out the beans.

https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/ehp.8009#:~:text=Because%20of%20the%20high%20capacity,unshelled%20beans%20at%20cocoa%20farms.

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supersecretaqua t1_jdof2a7 wrote

Unless you're making the very silly statement that because no one can do it, that it somehow changes the line of what is actually safe.. Then the same thing has been said and you're not actually arguing like you think you are.

Now, if you are saying that... Then you're having a different conversation and are either intellectually dishonest and trolling or just lacking in reading comprehension

Either way, the only actually objective safe value for consumption with lead is 0. Anything above that has risks involved period. We can't achieve 0 though, so there is nothing to do but determine a threshold that will be the most acceptable and that is determined by regulations. Since it's established we CAN'T, there is no other option. But there is still risks and is harmful regardless of regulation. Tangible evidence that any amount is still harmful and every decimal point above 0 that it is, the higher violence is in a community over decades. So...

If you're still struggling don't bother responding, I can't help you if that was too far above your head lol

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gerkletoss t1_jdofmds wrote

Safety is relative. There is no line. There's also no lead-free. That's why "no safe amount" is a useless statement.

That's why limits get established. They're actually useful.

>If you're still struggling don't bother responding, I can't help you if that was too far above your head lol

Irony thick enough to swim in

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