LOS ANGELES (AP) – 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 that 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 that 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 that California says causes cancer, though other groups classify it as a “probable” carcinogen.