Talk:Acrylamide

message: Also, If Most of our acrylamides come from coffee, than why has there been no demonstrable link between coffee and cancers? In fact, a study conducted in Japan on consumption of 2 cups non-decaf coffee per day found a nearly 50% reduction in liver cancers over the control group.
Are our foodstuffs such as cows, being tested for cancer before being sold?
: IANAD (I Am Not A Doctor), but can cancer spread via foodstuffs that way? I don't believe it can? - Jugalator 01:27, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)
Is Acrylamide a neurotoxin??? AFAIK, it is a neurotoxin. (I have been taught of this since I learnt how to cast SDS-PAGE Gel.) --Herbal Lemon 16:55, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've updated the article with more information about direct acrylamide exposure, and the negative results from recent cancer research. The former may answer your question somewhat better than before. :-) After doing that research, yes, it seems like it has effects similar to a neurotoxin in very large doses to me, as among others it can cause nausea, slurred speech, and paresthesia (disorders in your nervous system). - Jugalator 01:27, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)
It's a neurotoxin - my biochem lecturer spilt some on his hand once and it was numb for over a week. Don't know how it works but I believe it's worth wearing gloves when preparing polyacrylamide gels. Meconium 01:01, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

text: The change was mine, and the change involved ONLY wikilinking some terms and specifying the content of compensatory anticancer chemicals in coffee (see the diff). I reinstated that version. What else did I change, according to you? --Shaddack 13:46, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  health risk 

message: I'm not a chemist.  It's disconcerting to me that the SMILES string in the main text differs than the one in the sidebar overview.  Is this due to discrepancy, or non-canonical notation?  MaxEnt 23:25, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's simply that the molecule can be notated in more than one way, similar to how comounds can have more than one IUPAC name depending on where you start. A species is in brackets to show that its a self contained group, anything after the brackets is attached to the atom before them. While I'm sure one or the other is deprecated, theyre both comprehensible. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 13:35, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  SMILES inconsistency 

message: Long article about Acrylamide in food - havnt had time to read all of it. 
http://v3.espacenet.com/textdes?DB=EPODOC&IDX=WO2004039174&QPN=WO2004039174
Via Google News: 
Nature.com (subscription) Enzyme cuts out acrylamide
Nature.com (subscription), UK - 30 Aug 2006
... Acrylamide is produced by the Maillard reaction — the chemical process by which carbohydrates transform, under heat, to golden-brown deliciousness. ... 
from http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060828/full/060828-2.html
“I estimate that acrylamide causes several thousand cancers per year in Americans,” said Clark University research Professor Dale Hattis. Hattis, an expert in risk analysis, based his estimate on standard EPA projections of risks from animal studies and limited sampling of acrylamide levels in Swedish and American foods. 
from http://www.lifeware.us/Healthy_Cookware_Science/Acrylamide_Report.pdf#search=%22%22mallard%20reaction%22%20acrylamide%22
When smoking was first identified as being carcinogenic, some people scoffed at it being dangerous, and I imagine a few journalists would write reassuring articles about how it wasnt particularly dangerous, or accuse others of scaremongering. I wonder if we're at that stage with acrylamide now.
I would like to have clarified the connection with the Maillard reaction. And the article currently claims acrylamide is produced in two ways in food - by browning, and by prunes (which are dried - and hence browned - plums) and olives (which are processed to remove the bitter taste of raw olives) - which two chemical reactions are relevant here?
Doctors web page that I am working on indicates that this cancer causing agent is also found in corn chips under the same heating / frying issue. Helen Pensanti, MD's TV Shownotes: http://www.askdrhelen.com/shownotes/Dr-pensanti-food-toxins.html
I am not a scientist, but can follow most of the information.  I am very confused by a lot of seemingly contradictory statements.  The article states:  "Though researchers are still unsure of the precise mechanisms by which acrylamide forms in foods, many[12] believe it is a byproduct of the Maillard reaction.  In fried or baked goods, acrylamide may be produced by the reaction between asparagine and reducing sugars (fructose, glucose, etc.) or reactive carbonyls at temperatures above 120 °C (248 °F)."  And then goes on to state farther down:  "On August 1, 2008, four food manufacturers – H.J. Heinz Co., Frito-Lay, Kettle Foods Inc., and Lance Inc. – agreed to reduce levels of acrylamide in their products (such as potato chips and French fries) over a three-year period…"  
Okay, so what I'm reading is they are not completely sure how this ends up in food, but it may be part of this Maillard reaction which sounds natural.  However, is it that a natural browning reaction is creating carcinogens BECAUSE the food has somehow absorbed this byproduct of fertilizer and industry???  In other words, would browning have caused this 2000 years ago before we were creating this decay product of herbicides?  Since “Acrylamide is prepared on an industrial scale by the hydrolysis of acrylonitrile by nitrile hydratase.” Is this just a byproduct of modern industry that is somehow contaminating food, but, in the case of potatoes, not showing up until the food is heated?
On the one hand, the article sounds almost like this is some natural reaction during browning, but then goes on to say that those manufacturers agreed to REDUCE levels of acrylamide in their products.  HOW???  The main question the article does NOT answer is HOW can these levels be reduced?  Also, a statement saying there is less danger in home prepared foods than industrial prepared foods… yet there were statements relating the danger to the heat level.  I make homemade french fries at 375-425 degrees… certainly above 248.  How can the claim be made that home preparation is safer when no correlation to temperature is made?  HOW or WHY is home preparation safer???  I appreciate the information in the article, but some glaring questions remain to be answered.
108.82.99.236 (talk) 03:48, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  More possible content 

message: The correct structure for Acrylamide should show as -CONH2 (rather than CONH) - please help edit.
Regards
Mehtapm 11:34, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Correction of the structure image for Acrylamide 

message: The first paragaph of the 'cancer link' chapter contains a lot of weasel words: 'Some sources claim', 'accounts for a significant number', 'no consensus among the scientific and medical community', 'actively researched and investigated by government bodies', 'several different countries', 'Some research'. this should be clarified or removed. Update: paragaph removed.Sciencefact 00:04, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weasel words 

message: What does 'Acrylamide is incompatible with' in the initial paragraph mean? How & why is it incompatible unless this is obvious or excplained it prob shouldn't be there esp in the intro --Nate1481 11:09, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  ambiguity in intro 

message: Has anyone a reference for this claim ?  Nothing is said about this in the article on Olives.
Ditto prunes. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.157.183.213 (talk) 00:26, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Acrylamide in Olives

message: How does the storage-temperature issue tie in with the commonly used frozen potatoes ?  One suspects that once freezing takes place, the fructose formation is stalled, but what are the facts ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.157.177.139 (talk) 02:49, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Acrylamide in Potatoes

message: Does anyone have a reference to the non-thermal decomposition producing dimethylamine?  I don't see any good mechanism for this.  If non-thermal means hydrolysis, the product should be ammonia, which I've changed the article to say. ChemGardener 19:32, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non-thermal decomposition 

message: See for example this article http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2007/12/03/sciacril103.xml Its late at night for me, no time to do anything more tonight. 80.0.118.134 01:35, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yep, it DOES cause cancer says EU 

message: Two different options currently given by the article.  This can't be right.
—DIV (128.250.80.15 (talk) 09:24, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  IUPAC name 

message: I find the following sentence somewhat confused:
"they found the chemical in starchy foods, such as potato chips, French fries, and bread that had been heated (production of acrylamide in the heating process was shown to be temperature-dependent).[2] It was not found in food that had been boiled[2][3] or in foods that were not heated"
Particularly I don't understand what is meant by heating. All of the foods given as examples have been cooked/heated, so perhaps better wording would be: "in fried and baked goods such as potato chips, French fries, and bread." Also, boiling is a form of heating, and hence the second sentence does not really make sense as a continuation from the first. Perhaps better wording would be: "Neither boiled nor cooked foods were found to contain acrylamide."Jimjamjak (talk) 08:55, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I read somewhere that acrylamide is not formed at temperatures up to a little beyond boiling point. Cannot recall the reference. Frying, baking, and boiling are all ways of cooking food; but cooking by boiling does not produce acrylamide. 92.28.246.175 (talk) 11:28, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Heating 

message: This article seems to be extremely imbalanced. 95% of the content is now about trace amounts of acrylamide found in food and the health effects. Yet there is almost no information on the synthesis of acrylamide, its industrial uses, or its toxicity and carcinogenicity in worker-exposure doses (which has been well known for several decades). If nothing else, the section on toxicity in food needs cleaning up and organising. -Kieran (talk) 16:52, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Imbalance in article 

message: The French fries article says "A 13 year long observation performed by the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands, on 120,000 subjects between 55 and 70, has shown that increased intake of acrylamide (formed when potatoes are baked or fried) is correlated with a 60% higher rate of kidney cancer." ""Frieten zijn nu officieel kankerverwekkend". University of Maastricht Holland. Retrieved 8 November 2010." http://www.gva.be/nieuws/wetenschap/frieten-zijn-nu-officieel-kankerverwekkend.aspx?cmt=all
Be interested to see something about this in english, particularly the original paper. 
And, although it may be personal research or speculation, perhaps people's diets are sufficiently saturated with acrylamide so that a little more or less has effects that are difficult to detect, rather as the Romans were said to have shortened lives due to taking in lead from lead-lined drinking-vessels, water pipes, and lead additives to wine. 92.28.246.175 (talk) 11:21, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  60% increase in kidney cancer 

message: There is no info about instant coffee in this article.
If you Google or PudMed
"instant coffee" Acrylamide
you will find it contains MUCH more Acrylamide than ordinary coffee.
Can you find any comparison of different INSTANT coffee brands?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ee1518 (talk • contribs) 07:08, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: You can try adding the informationHardkhora (talk) 17:07, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  INSTANT Coffee 

message: Can we remove the ? It seems the article has grown a lot since then.
Thoughts?Hardkhora (talk) 17:08, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thoughts About Article Status 

message: “In February 2009, Health Canada …. Currently, they are collecting information on the properties and prevalence of acrylamide in order to make their assessment.”
Once again we have a time-based statement (currently ...) with no reference to the time itself. This is a trap frequently fallen into in Wikipedia and one of which contributors should be aware by now. The statement made sense at the time it was written, but loses all meaning now without a date being attached. Dawright12 (talk) 10:23, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not so bad since the consultation referenced is still ongoing (until September 20 2014) - but yeah "currently" is a hostage to fortune; for time-based statements the asof template is safer. Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 10:52, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Opinions of health organizations

message: I check pages listed in :Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of :Acrylamide's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.
Reference named "PGCH":
From Diethyl ether: 
From Chloroform: 
From DDT: 
From Carbon monoxide: 
From Chlorpyrifos: 
From Formaldehyde: 
From Malathion: 
From Carbon dioxide: 
I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 04:41, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orphaned references in [[:Acrylamide]] 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified  on Acrylamide. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.biocompare.com/ProductDetails/349470/GenElute-LPA-from-Sigma-Aldrich.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120212183149/http://www.food.gov.uk/safereating/chemsafe/acrylamide_branch/acrylamide_study_faq/ to http://www.food.gov.uk/safereating/chemsafe/acrylamide_branch/acrylamide_study_faq/
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140822174738/http://www.who.int:80/foodsafety/chem/chemicals/acrylamide/en/ to http://www.who.int/foodsafety/chem/chemicals/acrylamide/en/
*Added  tag to http://www.slv.se/upload/heatox/documents/D62_final_project_leaflet_.pdf
*Added  tag to http://www.slv.se/upload/heatox/documents/Heatox_Final%20_report.pdf
*Added  tag to http://www.slv.se/upload/heatox/documents/Pressrelease_HEATOX_project_completed_%E2%80%93_brings_new_pieces_to_the_Acrylamide_Puzzle.pdf
*Corrected formatting/usage for http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080802/ap_on_bi_ge/potato_chip_lawsuit
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20121020181820/http://www.epa.gov/safewater/contaminants/dw_contamfs/acrylami.html to http://www.epa.gov/safewater/contaminants/dw_contamfs/acrylami.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 15:20, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Unlike rats and other laboratory animals, humans have a history of 200,000 to 1.7 million years of using fire to cook food. It is not unlikely that this history of exposure has resulted in evolutionary pressure to enable humans to better tolerate the effects of acrylamide. Indeed, these effects may have even had broader effects on the evolutionary development of modern humanshttp://anthropology.as.nyu.edu/objec/anthroalumni.joandgarey,.https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6hArAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA259&lpg=PA259&dq=human+evolution+acrylamide&source=bl&ots=nQpAKm8tZv&sig=uu5UAbTZ6Fc44s9p1cDIlhkMHjE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwipssLhntjRAhVDI8AKHWIiA_YQ6AEIKDAC#v=onepage&q=human%20evolution%20acrylamide&f=false
Food for thought?Stub Mandrel (talk) 12:12, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: This isn't a page for general discussion, but AIUI the situation at the moment (as summarized here) is that in lab animals it is carcinogenic, and human intake of acrylamide can be sufficiently large for scientists to advise caution. Alexbrn (talk) 12:39, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Not intended to start a debate, but my aim was to query why this article does not appear to contain any of the counter arguments against what, in some parts of the media, is almost a moral panic over acrylamide. I'm well aware of the 'precautionary principle' approach followed by many agencies, and it's probably the right thing to do. But in the interests of NPOV the article should at least mention the theory that the lack of hard evidence for carcinogenic effects in humans is because they have evolved a tolerance for acrylamide in cooked food. It also sits better with an evidence based approach to medicine.Stub Mandrel (talk) 15:53, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: In the lede we have "As of 2016 it is still not clear whether acrylamide consumption affects people's risk of developing cancer." I think that's a fair summary of scientific consensus ATM. Alexbrn (talk) 15:58, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Just heard a report that CRUK are saying very clearly 'the case is not proven'. My point is that the evolution theory is both fascinating and interesting and should be included in the body of the article to help explain WHY it may be less dangerous to humans than other animals. Stub Mandrel (talk) 16:03, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is Acrylamide remotely dangerous to Humans? 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on Acrylamide. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110926213111/http://www.pipeline.com/~lenornst/DiscElectrophoresis.html to http://www.pipeline.com/~lenornst/DiscElectrophoresis.html
*Added archive https://archive.is/wwwfdagov/Food/FoodSafety/FoodContaminantsAdulteration/ChemicalContaminants/Acrylamide/default.htm to http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/FoodContaminantsAdulteration/ChemicalContaminants/Acrylamide/default.htm
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 05:25, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Acrylamide. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Replaced archive link x with https://web.archive.org/web/20090605153328/http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/FoodContaminantsAdulteration/ChemicalContaminants/Acrylamide/default.htm on http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/FoodContaminantsAdulteration/ChemicalContaminants/Acrylamide/default.htm
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 02:43, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hi,
Current text says "(...) pointing out that home-cooked food tends to contribute far less to overall acrylamide levels than food that was industrially prepared" citing HEATOX final report https://web.archive.org/web/20081217145945/http://www.slv.se/upload/heatox/documents/Heatox_Final%20_report.pdf. The wording suggest that same food home-cooked would contain less acrylamide that one processed industrially. This is not supported at all in the report, which just says "Due to the fact that a large
number of foods contributing to acrylamide intake are industrially produced the contribution from
home cooking is probably quite small in the general population."  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bartekbosowiec (talk • contribs) 10:50, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Heat-generated food toxicants (HEATOX) study 

message: : 50 mg/kg kills a monkey in 4 days. 200 mg/kg orally kills a monkey in 3 days. RudolfoMD (talk) 13:58, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Reminder: WP:NOR, WP:MEDRS. Bon courage (talk) 14:15, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Surprise, surprise!  Apropos recent edit battles.  It's toxic to primates too.  Reminder: Humans are primates.