California says coffee cancer risk insignificant

LOS ANGELES -- California officially gave its blessing to coffee Monday, declaring the beverage does not pose a "significant" cancer risk.

The rule, proposed a year ago by regulators, means coffee won't have to carry ominous warnings the beverage may be bad for you.

The state took the rare move after a Los Angeles judge found Starbucks Corp. and other companies failed to show benefits from drinking coffee outweighed risks from a byproduct of the roasting process.

That ruling put the industry in jeopardy of hefty civil penalties and in the position of either developing a process to remove the chemical or warning consumers about the risk of cancer.

The chemical in question, acrylamide, is on a list California says causes cancer, though other groups classify it as a "probable" carcinogen.

Under a law passed more than three decades ago by California voters, products containing chemicals causing cancer or birth defects must warn consumers about those risks.

The Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, which implements the law, concluded there was no significant risk after a World Health Organization review of more than 1,000 studies and found inadequate evidence coffee causes cancer. Further, it concluded coffee reduces the risk of some types of cancer.