PrepTest 47, Section 3, Question 7

Difficulty:

Legislator: To keep our food safe, we must prohibit the use of any food additives that have been found to cause cancer.

Commentator: An absolute prohibition is excessive. Today's tests can detect a single molecule of potentially cancer-causing substances, but we know that consuming significantly larger amounts of such a chemical does not increase one's risk of getting cancer. Thus, we should instead set a maximum acceptable level for each problematic chemical, somewhat below the level at which the substance has been shown to lead to cancer but above zero.

Legislator: To keep our food safe, we must prohibit the use of any food additives that have been found to cause cancer.

Question

Of the following, which one, if true, is the logically strongest counter the legislator can make to the commentator's argument?

The level at which a given food additive has been shown to lead to cancer in children is generally about half the level at which it leads to cancer in adults.

Consuming small amounts of several different cancer-causing chemicals can lead to cancer even if consuming such an amount of any one cancer-causing chemical would not.

The law would prohibit only the deliberate addition of cancer-causing chemicals and would not require the removal of naturally occurring cancer-causing substances.

For some food additives, the level at which the substance has been shown to lead to cancer is lower than the level at which the additive provides any benefit.

All food additives have substitutes that can be used in their place.

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