Many companies now routinely attach Prop 65 warning labels to any product of theirs that they think might possibly contain one of the 900 listed chemicals without testing to see whether the chemical is really present in their product and without reformulating their product, because it is cheaper to do so than to run the risk of being sued by Prop 65 enforcers.
It's not even that they think the products might contain one of those chemicals. It's that it is way cheaper to pay for a sticker than to spend the money to prove that they don't.
Plus it devalues all of the others making their job overall easier. This was a huge case of malicious compliance.
I like that California tries but they messed this one up.
As someone who both supports the idea of Prop65 and also does the compliance actions required for Prop65… fuck prop65.
It’s kinda like The Good Place. Turns out the world is more complicated than the laws can account for and we’re all getting cancer.
There was a cancer researcher talking about that. Pretty much everything can give you cancer, and doing everything perfectly doesn't mean you won't get cancer. He (or she?) recommended living life and not worrying about it too much. Moderate your exposure to known carcinogens, but balance that with enjoying things.
His main example was barbecue. There are a whole bunch of cancer causing agents in the smoke from BBQ. You increase your odds of cancer slightly every time you eat smoked brisket or grilled steaks. Should you stop eating BBQ? No. Eating BBQ increased your risk a negligible amount, while increasing your enjoyment of life quite a bit. The net gain of total life joy goes up. Just maybe don't eat BBQ every day of the year.
My university professor advice was similar to this. “Everyone will get cancer in one way or another. Eventually something will go wrong, a cell will malfunction and you will have cancer. The odds of cancer is one, the only reason you don’t die of cancer is that something else got you first. So don’t worry too much about the inevitable “
I remember seeing somewhere that a vast majority of people die and actually have cancer to one degree or another. They don’t die from it, or are otherwise negatively affected, but they have it. If they lived to be 150 or something, then yeah it might kill them. But otherwise they would have never noticed. Something like 77% of people.
Our cells somewhat frequently develop mutations that can lead to unchecked cell growth. It’s just that our immune system has the molecular machinery to repair them - most of the time.
They're actually trying to trigger the immune system to fight cancer cells, which could be a great way to cure cancer. They sequence the specific problem cells your body has, then do some chemistry to make your immune system fight back.
Currently we basically napalm our bodies with the hopes enough bad cells are killed over the rest of the body's healthy cells.
The immune system targeting will be more like a scalpel rather than a flamethrower.
I'm surprised it's only 77%. Cancerous cells are surprisingly common (I think I heard somewhere that the average adult develops a cancerous cell every 5 minutes or so). Our immune system just tends to kill them before they become clinically significant.
Our immune systems even have a type of cell that seems to primarily hunt down and kill cancer. "[Natural Killer Cells](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_killer_cells)"
Even without our immune systems most of the abnormal cells that could become cancerous die off because their abnormalities don't allow them to multiply like normal cells. You know those random hairs you get? Those are from follicles temporarily going nuts and producing hair at an insane rate. It's essentially the same thing that can lead to cancer, and it's just the normal result of the sheer volume of cells in our bodies constantly reproducing.
Which is also why we'll never "cure cancer". It is a problem endemic to the way our bodies work. The only thing we'll be able to do is minimize risk factors, identify malignant growths sooner, and improve our ability to remove or otherwise destroy those growths.
The thing is, "cancer" is just a normal process gone wacky. Your body is constantly dividing cells and creating new cells. Sometimes, those cells are a bit naff and don't work properly.
In ordinary circumstances, your body just sort of absorbs them back in and tries again (killer T-cells do this for you). If you're immunocompromised, have been exposed to certain viruses, genetically predisposed to it, or have damaged the relevant organs with carcinogens, this might go out of whack and *then* you have issues.
I'm ELI5ing and oversimplifying hard, but point is, you really, really don't need to worry about this because your body is going "lol nope, no the fuck you don't" at that cancer every 5 minutes, too. Your body *not* doing that is the rare thing that makes it a disease.
It's the same logic with diabetes. It's always fatal, the trick is to slow the decline until something else get you first. Properly played, you can outrun the thing for seven decades or more.
My mom has chosen the opposite. No BBQ. No soy sauce. No browning meat or toast. No bread. No rice. Only organic. Etc etc etc.
It caused daily fights when I was growing up because I like noodles and wanted spaghetti or mac and cheese. Or I was bullied in school because I wasn't allowed to eat burgers or hot dogs or chips or anything at any school "party."
My mom still insists that anyone who eats X will DIE of a heart attack by age 17 even if they eat X one time. This includes anything sold at McDonalds/Wendy's/fast food chains/etc.
I'm 26. I had big anxiety I was going to have a heart attack on the night of my 18th birthday because I once made a friend feel bad for me to the point they gave me a single fry. Moving out on my own sucked because I didn't have enough money to buy organic and had to quickly learn that a diet without carbs is really hard to get full on. I'm just entering the point where I can make curry and eat rice with it and not worry about how eating rice one time is supposed to doom me.
Also my dad did have a heart attack the night after I managed to convince my mom to buy a bag of potato chips because I was going to have a friend sleepover for the first time. My mom made ME feel like I caused my dad's heart attack because I corrupted the family into buying one of the death foods. No one should put that on a fucking child. And if foods were really instakills like that then they wouldn't be sold at grocery stores because society maintains that suicide is a bad thing. But man my mom's way of thinking has fucked up my relationship with food for years. Who cares if I get cancer at this point. Eating food every day without fear of death is a much more important goal.
What helped me is actually weird. I've wanted to die for a huge chunk of my life (abusive parents kind of just do that to you). But if I'm going to die tomorrow, what does it matter if I end up getting cancer or a heart attack from eating a nice meal? So I eat the nice meal, and then it makes me happy, and then I tell myself that if I stay alive longer I can make more nice meals.
If I killed myself tomorrow, I'd be cutting my life short by theoretical decades. So what does it matter if eating BBQ or smoked meat or the turkey skin at Thanksgiving or spaghetti shortens my life by 5 or 10 years? I'll prolong my life more by wanting to live it.
What I really need to work on next is probably talking to a dietician. My mom's philosophy of "even X once is a death sentence" means there's no room for moderation. So I know the basis of "eat fruits and vegetables and try to eat a variety of foods to hit all the vitamins and not have too much of anything," but I have no concept of "should I panic if I crave chocolate once a week?" or "can I actually eat rice twice a week without worrying about arsenic poisoning?" or "Potatoes count as a vegetable as long as I'm not frying them or eating them with 50% butter right?" A therapist can manage my feelings and anxiety about food, but I want someone who can actually tell me that I'm close to an acceptable diet.
I say this with a full understanding that you can't logic your way out of psychological trauma, but...just go into any American grocery store and look around a minute. Obesity is maybe the biggest health problem we have, and that's not a situation you can find yourself in as a country if a Big Mac and fries is lethal on any sort of time frame other than "well yeah, eventually you die of *something*".
Yeah this is what I'm trying to do with most foods. I'm also still alive even though my mom has been predicting my death for decades, and I've eaten potatoes, spaghetti, a couple french fries, etc.
I'm not here to be an armchair psychologist, but it doesn't sound like you've sought therapeutic help, and it would probably help a lot with both the wanting to die *and* the anxiety around food. I'm a kid of abusive parents who's long wanted to die and has had severe anxiety around the things my parents used to abuse me, and I'm here to say these aren't things you just have to live with.
Ah yeah same here, though for me, to a smaller extent as I moved away from home since I was 16. Also my mom is still open to "carcinogenic" things once in a while.
Hang in there though. Psychological damages done by parents are a pain in the ass to get rid of, to finally be free.
It's absolutely terrible for a child's wellbeing if the parents constantly go around claiming death lurks around every corner. That this thing is dangerous, that thing as well, and this and so many others. That every day they remind you that you have to be on guard, that you can't relax otherwise horrible things will happen.
No child can live that way, they can't independetly verify whether their parents are overblowing the risks. They have to trust their parents.
Worrying about things, being anxious about how bad things can go, that is something for adults to deal with. They have the stomach to stand the stress of that.
It's mentally healthier in long-term to make extra positive choices, eg. gym exercises, sports, pick up a music hobby, floss teeth more often. Turning down "guilty pleasures" entirely, without a sense of moderation, is the radical way and inconsquential in the big picture.
If we had three moderate pescovegetarians for each full vegan, we'd be making good strides toward a globally sustainable agriculture.
My university professor advice was similar to this. “Everyone will get cancer in one way or another. Eventually something will go wrong, a cell will malfunction and you will have cancer. The odds of cancer is one, the only reason you don’t die of cancer is that something else got you first. So don’t worry too much about the inevitable “
Label it "dihydrogen monoxide" (or "hydrogenol", or whatever) and "photonic radiation from nuclear fusion reaction" and they will probably jump out of the window the moment you open the bottle. There are people literally complaining that food "sometimes" contains atoms or chemicals.
I mean, some people smoke every day as well. It's a balance of risk vs reward. Eating BBQ increases your risk of cancer. Eating it every day increases it a statistically meaningful amount. Only you can say if the extra risk is worth it.
Personally, I wouldn't eat BBQ every day. But only because doing so would mean not eating all the other delicious cuisines I like. How am I supposed to eat amazing French, Italian, Filipino, Chinese, Thai or Mexican cuisine if all I eat is BBQ? I agree that BBQ is delicious. Just not so much that I won't eat anything else.
No. It also [prevented California companies from knowingly dumping any significant amount of any of the listed chemicals into drinking water](https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/10/24/20918131/california-prop-65-toxic-water). I think that’s a positive thing I don’t need repealed
More from the article I linked: Prop 65 lawsuits have forced companies to improve their products - for example reducing how much lead your faucet fixture allows to leach into your water, or changes in formulas for products used not just in ca but for the country (since ca is a large market it’s easier to just adjust completely than segregate)
But for the label warnings I think the threshold should honestly be higher as well and would welcome that adjustment.
It is now in terms of what faucets you buy, but older homes may have pipes and fixtures that leech. The government really just has the practical power to make sure what's coming into the home doesn't have lead or won't cause lead pipes to leech (the latter is what happened in Flint, MI).
There's some power for schools and other public buildings, but for homes it's trickier than people like to acknowledge. It's like a trillion dollar problem if we're serious about getting all the lead pipes in the country swapped out.
No idea. Compliance is cheaper than lobbying for a repeal and it’s not a super compelling talking point even if you’re some mega pro-biz politician.
But yeah, it needs to be redefined in a way that lets consumers make decisions based on real info. Right now it’s just totally useless.
What you don't see is all of the products that actually reformulated to remove the harmful chemicals because things like Pepsi didn't want a "contains carcinogens" label on them, reducing the amount of carcinogens not just Californians but all Americans (and in some cases all people) are exposed to.
Mostly because none of them wanted to have a press release about it and a label that says "now with 100% less cancer". Because people would ask how much cancer there was originally.
So it had some successes. I'm not qualified to speak to the amount of success vs. the amount of annoyance or desensitization though
I work for a company that transports hazardous materials and one of the guys who helped write the law works for my company. they literally changed the law about what level you need a hazard placard on a truck after getting a call from coca cola.
As a hazardous waste transporter and hazardous materials technician, I’m quite skeptical of this.
The only placard that is even remotely possible for Coca Cola is “Class 8 - corrosive.” But the DOT defines corrosiveness based on causing severe damage to either skin or steel in a specified time period. Cola doesn’t even come close to meeting the definition.
I did find something related to different regulations for how hazardous waste is defined (different from placarding rules). The original EPA regulations for corrosive waste used a lower pH threshold of 3.0. This was changed to 2.0 when it was pointed out that *many* common food products (including cola, but also lemon juice, vinegar, pomegranates, plums, sour candies, grapes, and limes) have a pH between 2-3, so a threshold of 3.0 made it illegal to throw moldy grapes in the trash or pour leftover lemon juice down the drain.
Same thing happened with the FDA and their allergen warnings. They added so many allergens that it's not worth it for most companies to deal with the cross contamination and strict guidelines for all of them, so they don't bother and just list them as being in the product (under 'may contains') even if they don't.
I would argue that Prop 65 works better than most people think it does. Sure a lot of companies don’t want to bother with compliance and just slap a sticker on anything that might remotely cause cancer but Prop 65 was created specifically to make companies who would be able to relatively easily use a carcinogen free alternative to their existing product go that route so they wouldn’t need to put a scary warning label on their product, and a lot of companies did that and do that because of the prop 65 warning. Particularly food, like I wouldn’t mind walking through a building with carcinogens but I might pick coke over Pepsi if the latter had cancer causing chemicals in it and a giant sticker stating that.
It’s not a 100% success since the labels are kind of meaningless now but it had a net positive impact on the world. It doesn’t even use taxpayer money since the law is essentially enforced privately by anyone who wants to sue people out of compliance. Its kind of genius, more laws should be like this but less obnoxiously
It's really not malicious compliance, it's straightforward simple economics. There's no intent to be nasty here or to defraud anyone. People sure can do it, but with most of this stuff, that's not the case.
A simple thought experiment should’ve been able to see this coming. But yeah, I think a new law should be rolled out like any other model or product. Do some “user testing” and see how they interact with it and work out the kinks before introducing it to everyone. But that makes too much sense.
Then again, I feel like California is often that guinea pig population for the rest of the US.
I think having them list every individual chemical instead of a general label would help a lot. Just give us the name of everything you didn't test for or otherwise made sure for it not to be in there. No company wants to list literally a thousand scary-sounding chemical names on food or skin products. But it's acceptable if they have just a "might contain sodium sulfate and traces of peanuts" label.
Same thing is happening with FDA required labels for allergens. A friend of mine can't find any bread that doesn't say "may contain nuts/sesame" anymore. Several brands have just started putting the labels on to protect themselves.
I was just talking yesterday about how Californias new law against gas mowers and weed eater is going to put small mowing businesses out of business with a quickness. The only ones they'll are going to be able to afford going to all electric are going to be the huge ones, and they are 100% going to put the extra cost of that on the consumer, that will have no other options. They may have enough equipment to swap out charged mowers throughout the day. Those smaller landscapers that mow all day, from this place, mowers on a trailer, to the next place, then the next, can just keep refueling all day now. What's gonna happen when hey have to take a few hours to recharge during the day? Down time. Zero revenue. IF they can afford the new battery powered equipment. $$$
At least in the EU most of those battery powered tools have swappable batteries. My weedwhacker and mower use the same battery (though the mower takes 2 at a time, the weedwhacker only 1). Just keep extras and swap them.
1) your hypothetical business is smart enough to figure out it’s a good idea to bring enough gas for the day … yet they have no comprehension of how batteries work and no foresight to bring enough charge for the day?
2) They were also completely blindsided by a publicized law and didn’t adjust to the changing business environment by procuring new equipment to maintain their regulatory requirements.
Your business does not sound competent or profitable. If they aren’t profitable enough to purchase or obtain financing for capital equipment, then the business has already failed. The bad outcomes you cited will be due to lack of planning and sheer incompetence.
small engines were never regulated to improve emissions quality. they output massive amounts of emissions ( more than cars). their time is over in the same way that leaded gasolines time is over.
The correct answer is just to do nothing and complain? No, California is right for trying to better its people even if doesn’t get it right every time. You have to try to succeed.
California does this on the regular though... straw ban anyone?
They like to ban or over-regulate instead of incentivize what they want. They tend to do things that make companies/individuals try to find a loophole or a cheap work-around instead of make it easier to do business.
Straws - plastic - bad - ban them!
Starbucks and others were like ok, fine, paper straws. Oh, paper doesn't do well with humidity so we need to wrap them now... in plastic. It is pretty much the same amount as before, although it is thinner/lighter so should break down easier, no clue though, the wrappers aren't regulated, so who knows what chemicals are in them? How long do these take to break down?
So now it is an inferior product that hardly helps with the problem (or created a different one) that requires enforcement and just gets everyone on all sides of the situation irritated (except the lawyers).
Imagine if the state used free market and said something along the lines of: Hey, we don't like these, if someone can figure out a way to make straws that break down in a reasonable time without poisoning wherever they end up (and prove it) we will give you a tax break for a few years or so, give you the contract to use your straws in all state supported places we need them, then give a tax break to any business that uses them... You would have companies tripping over themselves to solve the problem in the least expensive way because there is profit to be made. It would also mean you do not need to pay people to enforce it (or litigate it) on a wide scale so ends up cheaper in the long run. Everyone is happier (except the lawyers)
I work for a company that sells jewelry making supplies, we put these stickers on almost everything because the law is written so broadly that the risk is too high not to.
As you and others said, they are just about useless because even items that shouldn't need them have them. They are so prevalent that they just kind of blend in and are ignored... even when they shouldn't be. We have literally had the convo: "Does this really need a sticker?", "I am not sure, just throw them on it, it isn't worth taking a lot of time to figure it out."
Yup. Every item has the label so it's meaningless. Maybe item A is dangerous or higher risk but everyone else uses the label too because of the massive cost and time to prove you don't need the label.
No because their competitors also can't afford to test every single one of their products, so their competitors also slap the stickers onto everything.
How to fix this?
Decide what is considered dangerous/relevant concentrations of each chemical on the list, and what product category it is reasonable to test for every single one of them.
Then require the ability to produce documentation of testing for and finding *each* individual chemical they put a warning sticker against on demand, or get fined. And the sticker should list the concentration you can expect it to contain.
Then you throw out all the inevitable bs lawsuits that can't prove it was reasonable for the manufacturer to *expect* the product to contain the chemical in relevant amounts in the product to know to test for it.
As is, the system is a worthless cop out where nobody has to do any work and a waste of lots of good stickers.
As long as they put on a sticker and everyone can pat themselves on the back, companies don't have to work, they just slap on a sticker, compliance don't do any work, they just check for a sticker, courts don't do any work, they just check for stickers and rule in favour of the sticky ones.
End this cargo cult.
IIUC its also bc Prop 65, even when doing it properly, doesn’t care about exposure levels, only that a product could be carcinogenic. So there are stuff that are legit carcinogenic but not meaningfully so at the quantities that you are actually being exposed to
Prop 65 does take into account the amount of the chemicals and whether a user of the product would actually be exposed to it through normal use.
The main reasons that the stickers are included on everything are:
1) It’s up to the manufacturer to prove that their product is compliant if they do not include a warning on the product. If someone files a complaint with the state and later sues the company, the company must get the product tested to prove that it did not require a sticker. It’s not cheap to go through that testing for a product, so depending on the size of the company, it is a big burden to find out if your products do not need a sticker.
2) Lobbyists have pushed for a ridiculous number of chemicals to be on the Prop 65 list. In an effort to minimize the effect of the law, they pushed to make it so that most of the things you buy technically need to have the sticker. Once everything you buy has that sticker, the shock of receiving a product with that sticker attached begins to go away.
from what i understand, the "taking into account the amount" is only w.r.t to lifetime exposure levels, and not what a consumer would actually be exposed to with the product in question. do you have clarifications otherwise?
https://oehha.ca.gov/media/downloads/proposition-65/safeharborlist032521.pdf
As I understand, Prop 65 is concerned with daily exposure. It allows for, say, trace amounts of lead to be on the surface of a product because it’s unreasonable to expect there to be absolutely no lead on some products, even if the manufacturer has taken every possible precaution.
If a product does have trace amounts of lead, it can still be unlabeled and compliant because California has laid out acceptable exposure levels.
Also our research has increased the list of known carcinogens and our detection methods have improved drastically.
Technically potato chips or anything fried in oil contain acrylamides and those are carcinogenic.
So frenchfries and chips would need a prop65 label.
Wine in California tends to have a prop65 warning on the case. Many wineries use two different boxes, one with the warning for in CA and one without for the rest of the country.
Disneyland used to have signs at the bag check area that just said “Disneyland contains cancer causing agents”
They definitely tried to cover their bases!
Or in other words: California made the error of not forcing companies to check, so instead companies chose the malicious compliance route. It's the same with cookie banners. Both EU and California could write the law in a better way, but there's extreme industry lobbying against it, cause that would be costly for industry and only useful for consumers.
Fun story, California law now actually requires the label to specifically identify at least one of those chemicals to prevent this exact practice.
Enforcement has been... lackluster.
The law can also punish companies retroactively. If another chemical gets added to the list, and it’s in a company’s product, they face heavy fines even though it wasn’t known to cause cancer. It’s safer to just attach the sticker.
> The law can also punish companies retroactively. If another chemical gets added to the list, and it’s in a company’s product, they face heavy fines even though it wasn’t known to cause cancer.
That is just blatantly wrong. First, retroactive laws are not a thing.
Second, they literally spell out that there is a 1 year grace period when anything is added to the list.
You can only be punished for not including it when you should.
There is no punishment for including it when you don't have to. So the simplest thing for any company was just to place this on every product.
Cue me the guy at the prize counter at Chuck E. Cheese explaining that to the parents who let their kids pick prizes on their own. Yes it is a kids toy, no I don’t know which thing on the list it has, no you probably shouldn’t let your kid chew on it, it’s plastic.
Basically the crux of the entirety of Prop 65. Now I don't take it seriously because it's literally everywhere. I don't know which warnings are *actual* warnings and which are simply companies playing it safe.
California has methods of bypassing the normal legislative process via citizen's initiatives--essentially, get enough signatures on petitions and your proposition makes it to a general state ballot to be voted on in the next general election.
So a group felt that the politicians at the time were not doing enough to protect and/or inform citizens of potential carcinogens they were being exposed to, and thus put forward Prop 65. Which passed overwhelmingly, and that's not surprising--I know if I saw a ballot option that said "Companies need to label things that cause cancer" (and you didn't have your current knowledge of how things turned out), I probably would have voted for it as well.
But, of course, that list of things that cause cancer is pretty broad and found in so many things that it largely becomes useless.
For your specific example, I don't know exactly all of what might trigger the warning, not being treated probably doesn't matter, maple resin/sap may well naturally have cancer-causing compounds. However, looking through the list, I note that "Wood Dust" itself is listed as a known carcinogen (I presume in a manner similar to asbestos), so that alone would probably trigger the label.
There's also the problem that "causes cancer" is not defined. How much of an increase in the chances of getting cancer does any given product cause? I mean almost anything contains things that in high enough concentrations will raise your chances of getting cancer slightly. But those things don't exist in the product in anywhere near high enough concentrations to cause any issue whatsoever.
Testosterone, estrogen, and acetaldehyde, among others, are listed. All naturally present in the human body, in varying amounts. I should get the label as a tattoo.
> acetaldehyde
I seem to recall a few years ago, it was discovered that these were in all products where starches were heated up: breads, french fries, etc. And so there was about six months where bakers were like, "fuck it-- we're labeling everything in the store."
I'm not sure why that didn't happen. But it's the natural endpoint of this law. So it will happen eventually.
25249.8 (b):
> A chemical is known to the state to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity within the meaning of this chapter if in the opinion of the state’s qualified experts it has been clearly shown through scientifically valid testing according to generally accepted principles to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity, or if a body considered to be authoritative by such experts has formally identified it as causing cancer or reproductive toxicity, or if an agency of the state or federal government has formally required it to be labeled or identified as causing cancer or reproductive toxicity.
25249.10 (c) (Exemptions from Warning Requirement.):
> An exposure for which the person responsible can show that the exposure poses no significant risk assuming lifetime exposure at the level in question for substances known to the state to cause cancer, and that the exposure will have no observable effect assuming exposure at one thousand (1000) times the level in question for substances known to the state to cause reproductive toxicity, based on evidence and standards of comparable scientific validity to the evidence and standards which form the scientific basis for the listing of such chemical pursuant to subdivision (a) of Section 25249.8. In any action brought to enforce Section 25249.6, the burden of showing that an exposure meets the criteria of this subdivision shall be on the defendant.
Seems pretty well defined to me.
Problem that the way a company shows that the dust that rubbed off the cardboard box their product came in posed no significant risk is by being the defendant in a ruinously expensive law suit.
So the print the labels instead. That costs them a fraction of a square inch of box space.
The existence of a written definition does not mean something is well-defined.
>opinion of the state’s qualified experts
Who are these experts and who decides they are qualified? Is a Doctor of Naturopathy a qualified expert?
>clearly shown through scientifically valid testing
Who decides what testing is valid and what exactly is "clearly shown?" A certain p-value? A certain amount of cancer risk increase? How many papers need to be published on the chemical? Just one?
I could pose these questions for virtually every sentence in the "definition." Both of those paragraphs are exceptionally vague and offer no helpful guidance on determining what chemicals really need to be labeled.
I don't think that's the issue, though. The issue is that it's easier to just label everything, because there's no downside for a company to doing that. This, in turn, makes the labels meaningless.
Another angle to the wood thing......alot of the wood (or most/all of it, I'm not positive) you get at those places is treated with chemicals to help it resist rot and stuff....it's possible the 2x4s have chemicals on them besides straight wood.
At Lowe's I made the mistake of ordering online and having it delivered on a truck to my house. The employees seem to be proud of their ability to select the first effing thing their hand touches regardless of it being made of knots and being bent 45 degrees. Now, I go to Lowe's, hand-select the wood I want, and at checkout I pay for delivery. That way, I get what I want, and instead of planning for 10% wastage, I can plan for 5% wastage, and the source of the waste is cut ends, not entire effing boards.
Crude Oil is also a known carcinogen, so any businesses built on land within close vicinity of land that is known to contain oil must also label themselves as being located in an area known to cause cancer. Well guess what state is in the top 10 of the nation for oil producers? You got that right, California. It's really one of those instances where a good intention bill didn't have proper execution or parameters, so the warnings just became a joke and aren't taken seriously by anyone.
Kind of illustrates why democracy is just the least bad system of government. It works well if you assume every person is rational and well informed. Which they're not.
> However, looking through the list, I note that "Wood Dust" itself is listed as a known carcinogen (I presume in a manner similar to asbestos), so that alone would probably trigger the label.
Wood dust's carcinogenicity is almost certainly not in a manner similar to asbestos. Asbestos causes cancer because the sharp, small fibers of asbestos can enter the lungs, where they never break down and continually cause irritation and damage, which has to be repaired, and continuous repair increases cancer risk. Wood dust would not have similar properties in the lungs, but would likely cause problems from formaldehyde and chemistry in the wood and repeated exposure would cause serious irritation to the nose, mouth, and throat that might increase cancer risk.
Asbestos is one of the few things where it actually can "cause cancer" in the sense that a large enough acute exposure can significantly increase your risk, while wood dust (probably) isn't.
My favorite facet of this is that until about 2003, instead of "this product is known to the state of California to cause cancer..", it said "this product is known to cause cancer in the state of California...", which was just \*chef's kiss\*.
Proposition 65 was a poorly written law that created the labels.
Basically, the labels have become nothing more than an insurance policy so companies don't get sued. Attorneys would analyze products, and if even completely biologically insignificant amounts of "listed" chemicals were found, they would sue. Or for any number of other dubious connections that they could manage.
So everybody just slaps a sticker on everything, regardless of the risk factor.
This is actually bad for the consumer because it makes no distinction between things that are actually dangerous and things that aren't.
Legislatures/citizen initiative authors should never write a law creating a private right of action while expecting the public to follow an unstated rule for when to take action. Setting limits on acceptable behavior is literally the only point of any law.
Attorneys who go around sniffing for commonly accepted but illegal behaviors can be good for the world. E.g. such people are responsible for developing the case law that effectively sets a ceiling on 401k fees.
Yes they are part of the problem, but the law itself was poorly written so this kind of behavior naturally arises.
Unintended consequences are pretty common via legislations, that's why there are legislatures, where debates (adversarial conditions) happen so hopefully the eventual law can mitigate these consequences.
Other examples of unintended consequences through laws/mandates: 1. California raises fast-food minimum wage, but the fast food prices rises. 2. Alabama supreme court ruled that embryos are humans, IVF providers worried they might get sued so they consider stopping services in this state.
Exactly. Here is an anecdote that illustrates how this works:
A friend had a coffee roasting business in San Francisco. Coffee roasting can generate acrylamides, which are in certain cases carcinogenic. One day my friend got a letter from a lawyer threatening litigation due to absence of Prop 65 warning. After establishing that a Prop 65 warning was legally required in any business that has anything to do with coffee, my friend reluctantly agreed to put up the sign and pay off the lawyer to prevent litigation for the period of time without the sign. Rinse and repeat. I moved away from California....
[Wood dust causes cancer](https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/substances/wood-dust). It turns out lots of things cause cancer. Prop 65 encourages companies to label everything that might cause cancer even when it's only a danger at elevated, long term exposure levels.
Longer lifespans through modern medicine increases the likelihood of cancer. Moderate intake of known carcinogens (charred meat/charcoal grilled, hot dogs, alcohol, processed meat/foods, etc) anf hope for the best. A gi doctor told me that he refuses to eat hot dogs and sliced lunch meat, only rarely a burger, so that put things into perspective. Getting better moving toward a plant based diet but I like my booze.
So everything in the world can technically have a NFPA hazard rating attached to it. This is the red-blue-yellow diamond you see on chemicals. However, for the *vast* majority of materials that rating will he 0-0-0 and therefore it would be redundant. So it gets left off.
However, there is a problem with those kinds of rating systems: they rate acute danger, not chronic. A carcinogen is a chronic danger that you can get hurt by repeated exposure (unless it is a very strong one), so it isn't represented well in simple labeling. SDS documents show it, but regular consumers don't read those.
So California passes Prop 65, requiring all materials that could possibly give you cancer to be labeled as such.
However, everything will kill you. The range of chemicals that could possibly cause cancer is so incredibly broad that it becomes meaningless as a communicator of risk. It would be like saying that an electric heating pad and a lit firepit have the same level of burn danger.
You hit it right with: The range of chemicals that could possibly cause cancer is so incredibly broad that it becomes meaningless as a communicator of risk.
All chemicals (and every thing is a chemical) have dose related effects. Some nutrients that are used by the body and essential to your health, in small amounts but will kill you in large amounts. Like iodine, selenium, chromium, sodium, potassium, manganese, and many, many more.
As many have said, it is safer to label everything for companies.
On a side not though, technically the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) only classifies one substance as a group 4 carcinogen meaning it is probably not carcinogenic to humans. Caprolactum.
Everything else is either group 3 (Unclassifiable as to carcinogenicity in humans) or higher.
I just want to drop this 99% Invisible episode that did a good big dive into how we got here with Prop65. Ultimately it means super well, but sloppy business practices of throwing it on everything have undermined it
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/warning-this-podcast-contains-chemicals-known-to-the-state-of-california-to-cause-cancer-or-other-reproductive-harm/
And because everything is labeled the negative impact of including the label is lessened.
The side effects of a poorly written regulation that adds burden without adding any level of safety/awareness.
Here's the thing though. Yes it's on a lot of things. Pretty sure my couch had that label. Probably some kind of voc in the glue or foam. Whatever, not a big deal. However I'd never buy a mattress or cleaning supplies for example with that label. People do pay attention to it for certain things and it has caused manufacturers to change formulations to avoid that label.
>It’s a badly designed law (well intentioned, but not well thought through).
Which describes a large percentage of modern laws, especially those designed to protect idiots from themselves.
The reason lumber is labeled as a carcinogen is because when you cut it with a power saw, you form very fine particles which you will inhale while working the saw. It’s not really an issue for the occasional home project but it is linked to cancers for people who work in mills, carpentry shops etc and don’t wear respirators or breathing protection.
What? I've never seen this. I definitely see dairy products in absolutely everything. Ramen noodles? Lactose. Non-Dairy creamer (which is absolutely dairy)? Lactose. As someone with lactose intolerance and alpha gal allergy, I find it nearly impossible to completely avoid dairy products.
Long term exposure to wood dust causes lung cancer & nasal cancers. Wood dust is a Class 1 carcinogen, along with asbestos & alcohol.
If whatever you're using says to wear a respirator, (like stain, stripper, etc.) wear one!
I was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia 5 years ago. My 9 & 22 chromosomes decided to swap tails. An actual chromosome mutation possibly caused by chemical exposure.
Not so much a science denier in this case: my understanding is that the test in this case is incredibly strict and uses such high doses of the chemicals that many things which ordinarily in reasonable circumstances don’t cause any noticeable risk of cancer get caught up in it. So the science is often murky on whether they are actually a risk - but by the wording of the law they still have to be labeled.
>Literally everything seems to be causing cancer.
Pretty much everything *is* causing cancer.
At a very basic level, whenever a cell's mechanisms interact with pretty much *anything*, they have a slight chance of being thrown off and going wrong, which is what causes cancer.
Some things are much more likely to disturb the mechanisms. At the extreme end you have things like hard radiation.
The "this can cause cancer" labels aren't actually *wrong* in most cases. Yes, it's true that companies will slap them on without even testing to check if the "known chemicals" are in there, but it doesn't really matter; most of the time they'll be correct. Point at any random thing in your house and say "this increases my chance of cancer" and you will almost certainly be right.
The problem is that this isn't saying *how much* it increases your chance of cancer.
Let's say that the baseline for cancer is that in a million people, a hundred will develop cancer every year. A million people touch substance 1 and after a year, five hundred thousand of them have cancer. A million people touch substance 2 and after a year, a hundred and one of them have cancer.
Both substances technically increase your risk of cancer. Substance 1 is a clear and immediate carcinogenic threat. Any reasonable person would want to stay away from it. Substance 2 is not. Most people are not worried about a one-in-a-million chance of getting cancer.
The warning labels, among other issues, have such a low threshold for causing cancer that they are beyond what most people consider a "reasonable threshold".
Proposition 65 effectively requires any product with any amount of any substance with any evidence at all that it causes cancer to be labeled accordingly. This sounds like a good idea in theory but things get a little murky in the real world because science is complicated and 10 studies might say a substance doesn't have any effect on cancer risk but one study says there is a correlation and you end up with a proposition 65 warning for something that most scientists don't think actually causes cancer. This leads to the warning being on countless products which almost certainly do not cause cancer which has pretty much completely defeated the purpose of informing consumers, especially when we could be educating people about things that actually cause cancer like ultraviolet radiation from the Sun, and smoking.
Because California will fine the ever living crap out of any company that doesn't have them on it whether it originates in California or not, regardless of if it could actually cause cancer or not, or even if it's products are sold in California or not. I believe that California has actually argued in the past that you could potentially get cancer from heavy metals exposure by handling cut lumber. Yes, really.
You also need to realize that California has a ton of extremely low information voters that take many claims like this at face value and never once do question them, which has created a regulatory environment where many people who do not know near as much as they think they do actively campaign to add more and more stuff to those lists. Since California's government is also in a perpetual state of deficit spending, these fines also make a substantial amount of revenue for the state.
So it's part blatant extortion by the state of California, part misguided campaigning for further restrictions of certain voters in California.
It’s a totally foreseeable consequence of a state constitution that will let you make anything part of the constitution if you can get enough signatures to put a proposition on the ballot and get enough yes votes.
Like a lot of things it sounded good at the time as long as you didn’t think too hard about it.
Now unless someone wants to spend a lot of time and money to repeal it—very unlikely—we are stuck with it.
[We don’t have the longest one, though](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_constitutions_in_the_United_States)
Florida has the same system and it’s a joke. One year there was a law about animal husbandry regarding pigs. Since when does the general population know enough about it to make an intelligent decision? People vote those things into the constitution because the abbreviated version (also deceptively slanted) sounds good.
Idea was to use the market to encourage producers to manufacture less dangerous items. Require them to label, and they'll have to either put the effort into producing safer versions of their products or suffer the competitive consequences of selling a maybe cheaper cancer causing version of an item.
Turns out the way companies procure products or inputs doesn't make knowing what's in them easy, and using and holding accountable suppliers that provide safe versions is more difficult and less profitable, so they just slap a warning on everything because the sticker is cheaper than accountable production and an overwhelmed consumer can't make an intelligent choice.
> Idea was to use the market to encourage producers to manufacture less dangerous items.
If that was the intent than how dangerous something is should be part of the warning. Instead something that gives you a 1 in 10 chance of developing cancer if you use it normally for a year, and something that gives you a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of developing cancer if you consume your body weight of it daily for a year, get the same warning.
I can answer this a little more fully.
Prop 65 is the CA state ruling that requires suppliers to either attest that their product does not contain one of a myriad of compounds known to be bad for us.
It closely follows the European REACH legislation, with roots founded in the 50s and 60s when the chemical industry was growing rapidly and industry didn’t understand the side effect on humans.
It’s intent is to drive industry to find alternatives in manufacturing, often giving years of warning before something hits the books into law.
Is it costly to industry? Yes. Does it make us a healthier nation? Yes. Due to prop 75 we no longer have pthalates in flexible plastics, a very good thing.
When industry cannot or won’t find alternatives, they have to label their products with a prop 65 label. Nobody really wants to do this, hence a drive to comply since CA is a huge (largest US?) market.
I cannot speak to companies labeling everything just in case. In my experience we worked hard to avoid labeling and meeting requirements.
Source, worked in global procurement in plastics/chemicals/construction industries.
You can sell products in the US until they are scientifically tested and proven to be dangerous, the FDC then decides if your product needs a label, or other limitation, or ban. This happens after the fact that people got hurt or scammed. In other nations incl the EU, you need to first have your product tested and proven to be harmless to legally sell it and it gets a CE mark on it. The US laws protects industry first, in EU laws protects the individual/public first.
I'm a chemist, and there is a joke amongst my circle at least stating that according to the state of California everything is carcinogenic. The reality is that these labels are Californias litigation avoidance labels, basically if everything is carcinogenic then you can't sue California because you've been warned. Stupid
Prop65 was meant to make companies change their products to switch away from dangerous ingredients. It succeeded in that to a degree, many companies reformulated their products to be safer because of it.
Unfortunately it also opened a door to lawyers simply suing vendors for not having a warning label. Many small businesses didn't have the means to fight those suits and settled and ended up putting warning labels on their products as a result.
If the consequences are losing lots of money, many will err on the site of caution and just put labels on anything.
This overabundance of warning labels have resulted in some genuine threats flying under the radar.
It was a good attempt ruined by greedy lawyers.
If you'd like a great, in-depth, well-explained answer that gives tons of background information and discusses the effects of the warning labels (including product reformulations to remove known potential carcinogens), you should check out the episode of 99 Percent Invisible all about Prop 65 warnings:
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/warning-this-podcast-contains-chemicals-known-to-the-state-of-california-to-cause-cancer-or-other-reproductive-harm/
If you don’t have a label, people can sue you if they test your items and find they do have the banned chemicals and you didn’t put a notice on it
The idea was to shame companies into changing the formulas used and many things did change, there were baby toys, formula, even drinking water pipes that all contained lead and lots of it which have eventually been phased out. Even white out used to have toxic chemicals in it too
But many companies just slap the label on it and move on
At my last job our EHS (environmental heath and safety) director said that Prop 65 was basically a running joke among safety professionals.
I mean how is the average person supposed to take it seriously when you see the labels on things like coffee?
Free radical oxygen can cause cancer. What’s next are they going to put Prop 65 stickers in the air?
It's not effective in warning consumers about cancer rush. It is, however, effective in preventing sellers from marketing products as "safe" or "nontoxic".
Its just that its better to simply attach the text, just in case someone finds ANY trace of any of those chemicals (which AFAIK doest not have a lower limit, so technicallly one single molecule is enough), and then sues.
WARNING: this post may expose you to chemicals which are know ln to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.
It may also not expose you, I dunno, I'm a redditor, not a chemist.
Considering best intentions, it was a way to warn people about allegedly cancerous chemicals. Thus, companies must put the labels on products that contain these materials if they are to be sold in California. Many natural products contain these chemicals.
Not considering best intentions, it was a big payoff to lawyers who can then chase down every product they see that has any of these chemicals and get a payday. You make a product, you source materials from all over the world, are you going to chase down some supplier and subcontractor to that supplier in Mexico or India and have them prove to you that their products don't have these chemicals? To shield themselves, many companies just put the label on everything they sell in California.
So now the warning means nothing.
Californians finally had enough when someone went after Starbucks because coffee naturally has some of these chemicals.
One of my favourite podcasts of all time, 99% Invisible, has a whole episode on this https://open.spotify.com/episode/1j2u3hthdRM8Kg0GktsdpK?si=kAtw5jZ1QP6cIe7tLD8JSg
Prop 65 is literally the definition of violating the interstate commerce clause of the US constitution and someone needs to take California all the way to the supreme court over it.
Many companies now routinely attach Prop 65 warning labels to any product of theirs that they think might possibly contain one of the 900 listed chemicals without testing to see whether the chemical is really present in their product and without reformulating their product, because it is cheaper to do so than to run the risk of being sued by Prop 65 enforcers.
It's not even that they think the products might contain one of those chemicals. It's that it is way cheaper to pay for a sticker than to spend the money to prove that they don't.
Plus it devalues all of the others making their job overall easier. This was a huge case of malicious compliance. I like that California tries but they messed this one up.
As someone who both supports the idea of Prop65 and also does the compliance actions required for Prop65… fuck prop65. It’s kinda like The Good Place. Turns out the world is more complicated than the laws can account for and we’re all getting cancer.
There was a cancer researcher talking about that. Pretty much everything can give you cancer, and doing everything perfectly doesn't mean you won't get cancer. He (or she?) recommended living life and not worrying about it too much. Moderate your exposure to known carcinogens, but balance that with enjoying things. His main example was barbecue. There are a whole bunch of cancer causing agents in the smoke from BBQ. You increase your odds of cancer slightly every time you eat smoked brisket or grilled steaks. Should you stop eating BBQ? No. Eating BBQ increased your risk a negligible amount, while increasing your enjoyment of life quite a bit. The net gain of total life joy goes up. Just maybe don't eat BBQ every day of the year.
My university professor advice was similar to this. “Everyone will get cancer in one way or another. Eventually something will go wrong, a cell will malfunction and you will have cancer. The odds of cancer is one, the only reason you don’t die of cancer is that something else got you first. So don’t worry too much about the inevitable “
I remember seeing somewhere that a vast majority of people die and actually have cancer to one degree or another. They don’t die from it, or are otherwise negatively affected, but they have it. If they lived to be 150 or something, then yeah it might kill them. But otherwise they would have never noticed. Something like 77% of people.
Our cells somewhat frequently develop mutations that can lead to unchecked cell growth. It’s just that our immune system has the molecular machinery to repair them - most of the time.
Great job immune system. Keep it up. Please.
Instructions unclear. Autoimmune disease.
They're actually trying to trigger the immune system to fight cancer cells, which could be a great way to cure cancer. They sequence the specific problem cells your body has, then do some chemistry to make your immune system fight back. Currently we basically napalm our bodies with the hopes enough bad cells are killed over the rest of the body's healthy cells. The immune system targeting will be more like a scalpel rather than a flamethrower.
I'm surprised it's only 77%. Cancerous cells are surprisingly common (I think I heard somewhere that the average adult develops a cancerous cell every 5 minutes or so). Our immune system just tends to kill them before they become clinically significant. Our immune systems even have a type of cell that seems to primarily hunt down and kill cancer. "[Natural Killer Cells](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_killer_cells)"
Even without our immune systems most of the abnormal cells that could become cancerous die off because their abnormalities don't allow them to multiply like normal cells. You know those random hairs you get? Those are from follicles temporarily going nuts and producing hair at an insane rate. It's essentially the same thing that can lead to cancer, and it's just the normal result of the sheer volume of cells in our bodies constantly reproducing. Which is also why we'll never "cure cancer". It is a problem endemic to the way our bodies work. The only thing we'll be able to do is minimize risk factors, identify malignant growths sooner, and improve our ability to remove or otherwise destroy those growths.
I can’t decide if this is more reassuring or terrifying.
It's 5 am and I just read we literally get cancer rvery 5 minutes. Great. My day can only improve from here.
The thing is, "cancer" is just a normal process gone wacky. Your body is constantly dividing cells and creating new cells. Sometimes, those cells are a bit naff and don't work properly. In ordinary circumstances, your body just sort of absorbs them back in and tries again (killer T-cells do this for you). If you're immunocompromised, have been exposed to certain viruses, genetically predisposed to it, or have damaged the relevant organs with carcinogens, this might go out of whack and *then* you have issues. I'm ELI5ing and oversimplifying hard, but point is, you really, really don't need to worry about this because your body is going "lol nope, no the fuck you don't" at that cancer every 5 minutes, too. Your body *not* doing that is the rare thing that makes it a disease.
yeah but you can definitely increase your chances of getting cancer earlier by doing too many things with a risk of causing cancer.
Never get checked for it and you'll never be diagnosed with it. Check mate, cancer
It's the same logic with diabetes. It's always fatal, the trick is to slow the decline until something else get you first. Properly played, you can outrun the thing for seven decades or more.
My mom has chosen the opposite. No BBQ. No soy sauce. No browning meat or toast. No bread. No rice. Only organic. Etc etc etc. It caused daily fights when I was growing up because I like noodles and wanted spaghetti or mac and cheese. Or I was bullied in school because I wasn't allowed to eat burgers or hot dogs or chips or anything at any school "party." My mom still insists that anyone who eats X will DIE of a heart attack by age 17 even if they eat X one time. This includes anything sold at McDonalds/Wendy's/fast food chains/etc. I'm 26. I had big anxiety I was going to have a heart attack on the night of my 18th birthday because I once made a friend feel bad for me to the point they gave me a single fry. Moving out on my own sucked because I didn't have enough money to buy organic and had to quickly learn that a diet without carbs is really hard to get full on. I'm just entering the point where I can make curry and eat rice with it and not worry about how eating rice one time is supposed to doom me. Also my dad did have a heart attack the night after I managed to convince my mom to buy a bag of potato chips because I was going to have a friend sleepover for the first time. My mom made ME feel like I caused my dad's heart attack because I corrupted the family into buying one of the death foods. No one should put that on a fucking child. And if foods were really instakills like that then they wouldn't be sold at grocery stores because society maintains that suicide is a bad thing. But man my mom's way of thinking has fucked up my relationship with food for years. Who cares if I get cancer at this point. Eating food every day without fear of death is a much more important goal.
[удалено]
What helped me is actually weird. I've wanted to die for a huge chunk of my life (abusive parents kind of just do that to you). But if I'm going to die tomorrow, what does it matter if I end up getting cancer or a heart attack from eating a nice meal? So I eat the nice meal, and then it makes me happy, and then I tell myself that if I stay alive longer I can make more nice meals. If I killed myself tomorrow, I'd be cutting my life short by theoretical decades. So what does it matter if eating BBQ or smoked meat or the turkey skin at Thanksgiving or spaghetti shortens my life by 5 or 10 years? I'll prolong my life more by wanting to live it. What I really need to work on next is probably talking to a dietician. My mom's philosophy of "even X once is a death sentence" means there's no room for moderation. So I know the basis of "eat fruits and vegetables and try to eat a variety of foods to hit all the vitamins and not have too much of anything," but I have no concept of "should I panic if I crave chocolate once a week?" or "can I actually eat rice twice a week without worrying about arsenic poisoning?" or "Potatoes count as a vegetable as long as I'm not frying them or eating them with 50% butter right?" A therapist can manage my feelings and anxiety about food, but I want someone who can actually tell me that I'm close to an acceptable diet.
Half the world eats rice everyday and live long healthy lives. Probably one of the best carbs.
I say this with a full understanding that you can't logic your way out of psychological trauma, but...just go into any American grocery store and look around a minute. Obesity is maybe the biggest health problem we have, and that's not a situation you can find yourself in as a country if a Big Mac and fries is lethal on any sort of time frame other than "well yeah, eventually you die of *something*".
Yeah this is what I'm trying to do with most foods. I'm also still alive even though my mom has been predicting my death for decades, and I've eaten potatoes, spaghetti, a couple french fries, etc.
I'm not here to be an armchair psychologist, but it doesn't sound like you've sought therapeutic help, and it would probably help a lot with both the wanting to die *and* the anxiety around food. I'm a kid of abusive parents who's long wanted to die and has had severe anxiety around the things my parents used to abuse me, and I'm here to say these aren't things you just have to live with.
Ah yeah same here, though for me, to a smaller extent as I moved away from home since I was 16. Also my mom is still open to "carcinogenic" things once in a while. Hang in there though. Psychological damages done by parents are a pain in the ass to get rid of, to finally be free.
It's absolutely terrible for a child's wellbeing if the parents constantly go around claiming death lurks around every corner. That this thing is dangerous, that thing as well, and this and so many others. That every day they remind you that you have to be on guard, that you can't relax otherwise horrible things will happen. No child can live that way, they can't independetly verify whether their parents are overblowing the risks. They have to trust their parents. Worrying about things, being anxious about how bad things can go, that is something for adults to deal with. They have the stomach to stand the stress of that.
It's mentally healthier in long-term to make extra positive choices, eg. gym exercises, sports, pick up a music hobby, floss teeth more often. Turning down "guilty pleasures" entirely, without a sense of moderation, is the radical way and inconsquential in the big picture. If we had three moderate pescovegetarians for each full vegan, we'd be making good strides toward a globally sustainable agriculture.
My university professor advice was similar to this. “Everyone will get cancer in one way or another. Eventually something will go wrong, a cell will malfunction and you will have cancer. The odds of cancer is one, the only reason you don’t die of cancer is that something else got you first. So don’t worry too much about the inevitable “
My dad's doctor said, "Almost all older men will die with prostate cancer not from it."
Add in water sunlight and air and the paranoid will die of fear.
Label it "dihydrogen monoxide" (or "hydrogenol", or whatever) and "photonic radiation from nuclear fusion reaction" and they will probably jump out of the window the moment you open the bottle. There are people literally complaining that food "sometimes" contains atoms or chemicals.
Too many people think poltry is not meat and that meat is not animals!
"Just maybe don't eat BBQ every day of the year." lol, no. you must not be from around here.
I mean, some people smoke every day as well. It's a balance of risk vs reward. Eating BBQ increases your risk of cancer. Eating it every day increases it a statistically meaningful amount. Only you can say if the extra risk is worth it. Personally, I wouldn't eat BBQ every day. But only because doing so would mean not eating all the other delicious cuisines I like. How am I supposed to eat amazing French, Italian, Filipino, Chinese, Thai or Mexican cuisine if all I eat is BBQ? I agree that BBQ is delicious. Just not so much that I won't eat anything else.
And that's why cancer research deserves all the funding it receives and then some. We will, essentially *all* have to face cancer at some point.
Is there any kind of movement to repeal or modify prop65?
No. It also [prevented California companies from knowingly dumping any significant amount of any of the listed chemicals into drinking water](https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/10/24/20918131/california-prop-65-toxic-water). I think that’s a positive thing I don’t need repealed More from the article I linked: Prop 65 lawsuits have forced companies to improve their products - for example reducing how much lead your faucet fixture allows to leach into your water, or changes in formulas for products used not just in ca but for the country (since ca is a large market it’s easier to just adjust completely than segregate) But for the label warnings I think the threshold should honestly be higher as well and would welcome that adjustment.
> how much lead your faucet fixture allows to leach into your wate ... this is not regulated in the rest of the USA?!
It is now in terms of what faucets you buy, but older homes may have pipes and fixtures that leech. The government really just has the practical power to make sure what's coming into the home doesn't have lead or won't cause lead pipes to leech (the latter is what happened in Flint, MI). There's some power for schools and other public buildings, but for homes it's trickier than people like to acknowledge. It's like a trillion dollar problem if we're serious about getting all the lead pipes in the country swapped out.
No idea. Compliance is cheaper than lobbying for a repeal and it’s not a super compelling talking point even if you’re some mega pro-biz politician. But yeah, it needs to be redefined in a way that lets consumers make decisions based on real info. Right now it’s just totally useless.
California out here handing out cancer like Oprah hands out cars
[Joe Jackson - Everything Gives You Cancer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsQyru5ACmA)
What you don't see is all of the products that actually reformulated to remove the harmful chemicals because things like Pepsi didn't want a "contains carcinogens" label on them, reducing the amount of carcinogens not just Californians but all Americans (and in some cases all people) are exposed to. Mostly because none of them wanted to have a press release about it and a label that says "now with 100% less cancer". Because people would ask how much cancer there was originally. So it had some successes. I'm not qualified to speak to the amount of success vs. the amount of annoyance or desensitization though
I work for a company that transports hazardous materials and one of the guys who helped write the law works for my company. they literally changed the law about what level you need a hazard placard on a truck after getting a call from coca cola.
As a hazardous waste transporter and hazardous materials technician, I’m quite skeptical of this. The only placard that is even remotely possible for Coca Cola is “Class 8 - corrosive.” But the DOT defines corrosiveness based on causing severe damage to either skin or steel in a specified time period. Cola doesn’t even come close to meeting the definition. I did find something related to different regulations for how hazardous waste is defined (different from placarding rules). The original EPA regulations for corrosive waste used a lower pH threshold of 3.0. This was changed to 2.0 when it was pointed out that *many* common food products (including cola, but also lemon juice, vinegar, pomegranates, plums, sour candies, grapes, and limes) have a pH between 2-3, so a threshold of 3.0 made it illegal to throw moldy grapes in the trash or pour leftover lemon juice down the drain.
Same thing happened with the FDA and their allergen warnings. They added so many allergens that it's not worth it for most companies to deal with the cross contamination and strict guidelines for all of them, so they don't bother and just list them as being in the product (under 'may contains') even if they don't.
I would argue that Prop 65 works better than most people think it does. Sure a lot of companies don’t want to bother with compliance and just slap a sticker on anything that might remotely cause cancer but Prop 65 was created specifically to make companies who would be able to relatively easily use a carcinogen free alternative to their existing product go that route so they wouldn’t need to put a scary warning label on their product, and a lot of companies did that and do that because of the prop 65 warning. Particularly food, like I wouldn’t mind walking through a building with carcinogens but I might pick coke over Pepsi if the latter had cancer causing chemicals in it and a giant sticker stating that. It’s not a 100% success since the labels are kind of meaningless now but it had a net positive impact on the world. It doesn’t even use taxpayer money since the law is essentially enforced privately by anyone who wants to sue people out of compliance. Its kind of genius, more laws should be like this but less obnoxiously
It's really not malicious compliance, it's straightforward simple economics. There's no intent to be nasty here or to defraud anyone. People sure can do it, but with most of this stuff, that's not the case.
Wonder if a better option is for laws to have a trial period or expiry… lots of law is well meaning but experimental, or things just change.
A simple thought experiment should’ve been able to see this coming. But yeah, I think a new law should be rolled out like any other model or product. Do some “user testing” and see how they interact with it and work out the kinks before introducing it to everyone. But that makes too much sense. Then again, I feel like California is often that guinea pig population for the rest of the US.
I think having them list every individual chemical instead of a general label would help a lot. Just give us the name of everything you didn't test for or otherwise made sure for it not to be in there. No company wants to list literally a thousand scary-sounding chemical names on food or skin products. But it's acceptable if they have just a "might contain sodium sulfate and traces of peanuts" label.
This is a great summation!
Same thing is happening with FDA required labels for allergens. A friend of mine can't find any bread that doesn't say "may contain nuts/sesame" anymore. Several brands have just started putting the labels on to protect themselves.
I was just talking yesterday about how Californias new law against gas mowers and weed eater is going to put small mowing businesses out of business with a quickness. The only ones they'll are going to be able to afford going to all electric are going to be the huge ones, and they are 100% going to put the extra cost of that on the consumer, that will have no other options. They may have enough equipment to swap out charged mowers throughout the day. Those smaller landscapers that mow all day, from this place, mowers on a trailer, to the next place, then the next, can just keep refueling all day now. What's gonna happen when hey have to take a few hours to recharge during the day? Down time. Zero revenue. IF they can afford the new battery powered equipment. $$$
At least in the EU most of those battery powered tools have swappable batteries. My weedwhacker and mower use the same battery (though the mower takes 2 at a time, the weedwhacker only 1). Just keep extras and swap them.
1) your hypothetical business is smart enough to figure out it’s a good idea to bring enough gas for the day … yet they have no comprehension of how batteries work and no foresight to bring enough charge for the day? 2) They were also completely blindsided by a publicized law and didn’t adjust to the changing business environment by procuring new equipment to maintain their regulatory requirements. Your business does not sound competent or profitable. If they aren’t profitable enough to purchase or obtain financing for capital equipment, then the business has already failed. The bad outcomes you cited will be due to lack of planning and sheer incompetence. small engines were never regulated to improve emissions quality. they output massive amounts of emissions ( more than cars). their time is over in the same way that leaded gasolines time is over.
Idiots with good intentions are very dangerous.
The correct answer is just to do nothing and complain? No, California is right for trying to better its people even if doesn’t get it right every time. You have to try to succeed.
California does this on the regular though... straw ban anyone? They like to ban or over-regulate instead of incentivize what they want. They tend to do things that make companies/individuals try to find a loophole or a cheap work-around instead of make it easier to do business. Straws - plastic - bad - ban them! Starbucks and others were like ok, fine, paper straws. Oh, paper doesn't do well with humidity so we need to wrap them now... in plastic. It is pretty much the same amount as before, although it is thinner/lighter so should break down easier, no clue though, the wrappers aren't regulated, so who knows what chemicals are in them? How long do these take to break down? So now it is an inferior product that hardly helps with the problem (or created a different one) that requires enforcement and just gets everyone on all sides of the situation irritated (except the lawyers). Imagine if the state used free market and said something along the lines of: Hey, we don't like these, if someone can figure out a way to make straws that break down in a reasonable time without poisoning wherever they end up (and prove it) we will give you a tax break for a few years or so, give you the contract to use your straws in all state supported places we need them, then give a tax break to any business that uses them... You would have companies tripping over themselves to solve the problem in the least expensive way because there is profit to be made. It would also mean you do not need to pay people to enforce it (or litigate it) on a wide scale so ends up cheaper in the long run. Everyone is happier (except the lawyers) I work for a company that sells jewelry making supplies, we put these stickers on almost everything because the law is written so broadly that the risk is too high not to. As you and others said, they are just about useless because even items that shouldn't need them have them. They are so prevalent that they just kind of blend in and are ignored... even when they shouldn't be. We have literally had the convo: "Does this really need a sticker?", "I am not sure, just throw them on it, it isn't worth taking a lot of time to figure it out."
But wouldn't that make some customers less likely to buy the product? That's also part of the cost.
Not when every other competing product has the exact same label. That's the point.
I always tell myself that these things only cause cancer if you are in California at the time of using said product.
Yup. Every item has the label so it's meaningless. Maybe item A is dangerous or higher risk but everyone else uses the label too because of the massive cost and time to prove you don't need the label.
No, because the warning has been so overused that it means absolutely nothing to the overwhelming majority of consumers.
No because their competitors also can't afford to test every single one of their products, so their competitors also slap the stickers onto everything.
How to fix this? Decide what is considered dangerous/relevant concentrations of each chemical on the list, and what product category it is reasonable to test for every single one of them. Then require the ability to produce documentation of testing for and finding *each* individual chemical they put a warning sticker against on demand, or get fined. And the sticker should list the concentration you can expect it to contain. Then you throw out all the inevitable bs lawsuits that can't prove it was reasonable for the manufacturer to *expect* the product to contain the chemical in relevant amounts in the product to know to test for it. As is, the system is a worthless cop out where nobody has to do any work and a waste of lots of good stickers. As long as they put on a sticker and everyone can pat themselves on the back, companies don't have to work, they just slap on a sticker, compliance don't do any work, they just check for a sticker, courts don't do any work, they just check for stickers and rule in favour of the sticky ones. End this cargo cult.
lol good job, California.
Yes crying wolf so many times those labels are useless to determine if there is really any cancer hazard. I always google: (product name) sds
Also funny how stuff is “known” to the state of California to cause cancer or reproductive harm when the science is murky at best.
>sds I think you meant msds which for those unfamiliar is short for material safety data sheet.
IIUC its also bc Prop 65, even when doing it properly, doesn’t care about exposure levels, only that a product could be carcinogenic. So there are stuff that are legit carcinogenic but not meaningfully so at the quantities that you are actually being exposed to
Prop 65 does take into account the amount of the chemicals and whether a user of the product would actually be exposed to it through normal use. The main reasons that the stickers are included on everything are: 1) It’s up to the manufacturer to prove that their product is compliant if they do not include a warning on the product. If someone files a complaint with the state and later sues the company, the company must get the product tested to prove that it did not require a sticker. It’s not cheap to go through that testing for a product, so depending on the size of the company, it is a big burden to find out if your products do not need a sticker. 2) Lobbyists have pushed for a ridiculous number of chemicals to be on the Prop 65 list. In an effort to minimize the effect of the law, they pushed to make it so that most of the things you buy technically need to have the sticker. Once everything you buy has that sticker, the shock of receiving a product with that sticker attached begins to go away.
from what i understand, the "taking into account the amount" is only w.r.t to lifetime exposure levels, and not what a consumer would actually be exposed to with the product in question. do you have clarifications otherwise?
https://oehha.ca.gov/media/downloads/proposition-65/safeharborlist032521.pdf As I understand, Prop 65 is concerned with daily exposure. It allows for, say, trace amounts of lead to be on the surface of a product because it’s unreasonable to expect there to be absolutely no lead on some products, even if the manufacturer has taken every possible precaution. If a product does have trace amounts of lead, it can still be unlabeled and compliant because California has laid out acceptable exposure levels.
The general assumption is that cancer risks are cumulative across multiple chemicals.
Also our research has increased the list of known carcinogens and our detection methods have improved drastically. Technically potato chips or anything fried in oil contain acrylamides and those are carcinogenic. So frenchfries and chips would need a prop65 label.
Ethyl alcohol is a known carcinogen, and causes birth defects. So much for the entire wine industry in California.
Wine in California tends to have a prop65 warning on the case. Many wineries use two different boxes, one with the warning for in CA and one without for the rest of the country.
Fast food restaurants here do have prop 65 warnings on their doors.
That’s almost always for building materials I think. But who knows! it could literally be anything. GREAT LAW
Plot twist: said stickers contain cancerous chemicals in the adhesive
/r/nottheonion kinda vibe.
I hate the sue culture in the US.
Disneyland used to have signs at the bag check area that just said “Disneyland contains cancer causing agents” They definitely tried to cover their bases!
Or in other words: California made the error of not forcing companies to check, so instead companies chose the malicious compliance route. It's the same with cookie banners. Both EU and California could write the law in a better way, but there's extreme industry lobbying against it, cause that would be costly for industry and only useful for consumers.
And because the labels have literally no influence on consumer behavior any more.
Fun story, California law now actually requires the label to specifically identify at least one of those chemicals to prevent this exact practice. Enforcement has been... lackluster.
The law can also punish companies retroactively. If another chemical gets added to the list, and it’s in a company’s product, they face heavy fines even though it wasn’t known to cause cancer. It’s safer to just attach the sticker.
And they don't even need to exist, operate, or sell their products in the People's Republic of Kalifornia to be sued!
> The law can also punish companies retroactively. If another chemical gets added to the list, and it’s in a company’s product, they face heavy fines even though it wasn’t known to cause cancer. That is just blatantly wrong. First, retroactive laws are not a thing. Second, they literally spell out that there is a 1 year grace period when anything is added to the list.
The ballot text to vote against literally said this would happen.
I always thought it'd be funny to learn that the stickers themselves contained known carcinogens
You can only be punished for not including it when you should. There is no punishment for including it when you don't have to. So the simplest thing for any company was just to place this on every product.
Cue me the guy at the prize counter at Chuck E. Cheese explaining that to the parents who let their kids pick prizes on their own. Yes it is a kids toy, no I don’t know which thing on the list it has, no you probably shouldn’t let your kid chew on it, it’s plastic.
Basically the crux of the entirety of Prop 65. Now I don't take it seriously because it's literally everywhere. I don't know which warnings are *actual* warnings and which are simply companies playing it safe.
Not to mention it is on you to prove it doesn't if your don't. So yeah completely useless now.
Making the sticker 100% worthless. Who benefited? Big sticker?
It's always Big Sticker that benefits in the end
California has methods of bypassing the normal legislative process via citizen's initiatives--essentially, get enough signatures on petitions and your proposition makes it to a general state ballot to be voted on in the next general election. So a group felt that the politicians at the time were not doing enough to protect and/or inform citizens of potential carcinogens they were being exposed to, and thus put forward Prop 65. Which passed overwhelmingly, and that's not surprising--I know if I saw a ballot option that said "Companies need to label things that cause cancer" (and you didn't have your current knowledge of how things turned out), I probably would have voted for it as well. But, of course, that list of things that cause cancer is pretty broad and found in so many things that it largely becomes useless. For your specific example, I don't know exactly all of what might trigger the warning, not being treated probably doesn't matter, maple resin/sap may well naturally have cancer-causing compounds. However, looking through the list, I note that "Wood Dust" itself is listed as a known carcinogen (I presume in a manner similar to asbestos), so that alone would probably trigger the label.
There's also the problem that "causes cancer" is not defined. How much of an increase in the chances of getting cancer does any given product cause? I mean almost anything contains things that in high enough concentrations will raise your chances of getting cancer slightly. But those things don't exist in the product in anywhere near high enough concentrations to cause any issue whatsoever.
Testosterone, estrogen, and acetaldehyde, among others, are listed. All naturally present in the human body, in varying amounts. I should get the label as a tattoo.
> acetaldehyde I seem to recall a few years ago, it was discovered that these were in all products where starches were heated up: breads, french fries, etc. And so there was about six months where bakers were like, "fuck it-- we're labeling everything in the store." I'm not sure why that didn't happen. But it's the natural endpoint of this law. So it will happen eventually.
25249.8 (b): > A chemical is known to the state to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity within the meaning of this chapter if in the opinion of the state’s qualified experts it has been clearly shown through scientifically valid testing according to generally accepted principles to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity, or if a body considered to be authoritative by such experts has formally identified it as causing cancer or reproductive toxicity, or if an agency of the state or federal government has formally required it to be labeled or identified as causing cancer or reproductive toxicity. 25249.10 (c) (Exemptions from Warning Requirement.): > An exposure for which the person responsible can show that the exposure poses no significant risk assuming lifetime exposure at the level in question for substances known to the state to cause cancer, and that the exposure will have no observable effect assuming exposure at one thousand (1000) times the level in question for substances known to the state to cause reproductive toxicity, based on evidence and standards of comparable scientific validity to the evidence and standards which form the scientific basis for the listing of such chemical pursuant to subdivision (a) of Section 25249.8. In any action brought to enforce Section 25249.6, the burden of showing that an exposure meets the criteria of this subdivision shall be on the defendant. Seems pretty well defined to me.
Problem that the way a company shows that the dust that rubbed off the cardboard box their product came in posed no significant risk is by being the defendant in a ruinously expensive law suit. So the print the labels instead. That costs them a fraction of a square inch of box space.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Prop 65 did what the implementors and voters wanted, I'm just saying it's actually pretty well defined.
The existence of a written definition does not mean something is well-defined. >opinion of the state’s qualified experts Who are these experts and who decides they are qualified? Is a Doctor of Naturopathy a qualified expert? >clearly shown through scientifically valid testing Who decides what testing is valid and what exactly is "clearly shown?" A certain p-value? A certain amount of cancer risk increase? How many papers need to be published on the chemical? Just one? I could pose these questions for virtually every sentence in the "definition." Both of those paragraphs are exceptionally vague and offer no helpful guidance on determining what chemicals really need to be labeled.
I don't think that's the issue, though. The issue is that it's easier to just label everything, because there's no downside for a company to doing that. This, in turn, makes the labels meaningless.
I don’t disagree with that.
Another angle to the wood thing......alot of the wood (or most/all of it, I'm not positive) you get at those places is treated with chemicals to help it resist rot and stuff....it's possible the 2x4s have chemicals on them besides straight wood.
Won’t be a problem for Home Depot, none of their wood is straight.
Yup I remember going through a pile of 100 2x4’s to find a half dozen that were straight enough for our purposes.
At Lowe's I made the mistake of ordering online and having it delivered on a truck to my house. The employees seem to be proud of their ability to select the first effing thing their hand touches regardless of it being made of knots and being bent 45 degrees. Now, I go to Lowe's, hand-select the wood I want, and at checkout I pay for delivery. That way, I get what I want, and instead of planning for 10% wastage, I can plan for 5% wastage, and the source of the waste is cut ends, not entire effing boards.
Saw dust is carcinogenic. It's why woodworkers wear masks.
Also dust is straight terrible for you regardless.
Crude Oil is also a known carcinogen, so any businesses built on land within close vicinity of land that is known to contain oil must also label themselves as being located in an area known to cause cancer. Well guess what state is in the top 10 of the nation for oil producers? You got that right, California. It's really one of those instances where a good intention bill didn't have proper execution or parameters, so the warnings just became a joke and aren't taken seriously by anyone.
Kind of illustrates why democracy is just the least bad system of government. It works well if you assume every person is rational and well informed. Which they're not.
> However, looking through the list, I note that "Wood Dust" itself is listed as a known carcinogen (I presume in a manner similar to asbestos), so that alone would probably trigger the label. Wood dust's carcinogenicity is almost certainly not in a manner similar to asbestos. Asbestos causes cancer because the sharp, small fibers of asbestos can enter the lungs, where they never break down and continually cause irritation and damage, which has to be repaired, and continuous repair increases cancer risk. Wood dust would not have similar properties in the lungs, but would likely cause problems from formaldehyde and chemistry in the wood and repeated exposure would cause serious irritation to the nose, mouth, and throat that might increase cancer risk. Asbestos is one of the few things where it actually can "cause cancer" in the sense that a large enough acute exposure can significantly increase your risk, while wood dust (probably) isn't.
My favorite facet of this is that until about 2003, instead of "this product is known to the state of California to cause cancer..", it said "this product is known to cause cancer in the state of California...", which was just \*chef's kiss\*.
So if I buy it and immediately take it out of state, now it is safe. /s
Hahaha
Proposition 65 was a poorly written law that created the labels. Basically, the labels have become nothing more than an insurance policy so companies don't get sued. Attorneys would analyze products, and if even completely biologically insignificant amounts of "listed" chemicals were found, they would sue. Or for any number of other dubious connections that they could manage. So everybody just slaps a sticker on everything, regardless of the risk factor. This is actually bad for the consumer because it makes no distinction between things that are actually dangerous and things that aren't.
So the real problem is lawsuit thirsty attorneys
Legislatures/citizen initiative authors should never write a law creating a private right of action while expecting the public to follow an unstated rule for when to take action. Setting limits on acceptable behavior is literally the only point of any law. Attorneys who go around sniffing for commonly accepted but illegal behaviors can be good for the world. E.g. such people are responsible for developing the case law that effectively sets a ceiling on 401k fees.
Yes they are part of the problem, but the law itself was poorly written so this kind of behavior naturally arises. Unintended consequences are pretty common via legislations, that's why there are legislatures, where debates (adversarial conditions) happen so hopefully the eventual law can mitigate these consequences. Other examples of unintended consequences through laws/mandates: 1. California raises fast-food minimum wage, but the fast food prices rises. 2. Alabama supreme court ruled that embryos are humans, IVF providers worried they might get sued so they consider stopping services in this state.
Exactly. Here is an anecdote that illustrates how this works: A friend had a coffee roasting business in San Francisco. Coffee roasting can generate acrylamides, which are in certain cases carcinogenic. One day my friend got a letter from a lawyer threatening litigation due to absence of Prop 65 warning. After establishing that a Prop 65 warning was legally required in any business that has anything to do with coffee, my friend reluctantly agreed to put up the sign and pay off the lawyer to prevent litigation for the period of time without the sign. Rinse and repeat. I moved away from California....
Seems par for the course.
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[Wood dust causes cancer](https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/substances/wood-dust). It turns out lots of things cause cancer. Prop 65 encourages companies to label everything that might cause cancer even when it's only a danger at elevated, long term exposure levels.
> to label everything that might cause cancer and everything else just to be safe, because you only get punished for not putting it on something
My old apartment complex had Prop 65 warnings on the outside of the building...
Longer lifespans through modern medicine increases the likelihood of cancer. Moderate intake of known carcinogens (charred meat/charcoal grilled, hot dogs, alcohol, processed meat/foods, etc) anf hope for the best. A gi doctor told me that he refuses to eat hot dogs and sliced lunch meat, only rarely a burger, so that put things into perspective. Getting better moving toward a plant based diet but I like my booze.
So everything in the world can technically have a NFPA hazard rating attached to it. This is the red-blue-yellow diamond you see on chemicals. However, for the *vast* majority of materials that rating will he 0-0-0 and therefore it would be redundant. So it gets left off. However, there is a problem with those kinds of rating systems: they rate acute danger, not chronic. A carcinogen is a chronic danger that you can get hurt by repeated exposure (unless it is a very strong one), so it isn't represented well in simple labeling. SDS documents show it, but regular consumers don't read those. So California passes Prop 65, requiring all materials that could possibly give you cancer to be labeled as such. However, everything will kill you. The range of chemicals that could possibly cause cancer is so incredibly broad that it becomes meaningless as a communicator of risk. It would be like saying that an electric heating pad and a lit firepit have the same level of burn danger.
You hit it right with: The range of chemicals that could possibly cause cancer is so incredibly broad that it becomes meaningless as a communicator of risk. All chemicals (and every thing is a chemical) have dose related effects. Some nutrients that are used by the body and essential to your health, in small amounts but will kill you in large amounts. Like iodine, selenium, chromium, sodium, potassium, manganese, and many, many more.
Breathing oxygen accelerates dying
As many have said, it is safer to label everything for companies. On a side not though, technically the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) only classifies one substance as a group 4 carcinogen meaning it is probably not carcinogenic to humans. Caprolactum. Everything else is either group 3 (Unclassifiable as to carcinogenicity in humans) or higher.
IARC’s list is itself full of bad science.
I just want to drop this 99% Invisible episode that did a good big dive into how we got here with Prop65. Ultimately it means super well, but sloppy business practices of throwing it on everything have undermined it https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/warning-this-podcast-contains-chemicals-known-to-the-state-of-california-to-cause-cancer-or-other-reproductive-harm/
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And because everything is labeled the negative impact of including the label is lessened. The side effects of a poorly written regulation that adds burden without adding any level of safety/awareness.
Here's the thing though. Yes it's on a lot of things. Pretty sure my couch had that label. Probably some kind of voc in the glue or foam. Whatever, not a big deal. However I'd never buy a mattress or cleaning supplies for example with that label. People do pay attention to it for certain things and it has caused manufacturers to change formulations to avoid that label.
>It’s a badly designed law (well intentioned, but not well thought through). Which describes a large percentage of modern laws, especially those designed to protect idiots from themselves.
Yessss so goood
Great episode, also came here to say this.
Came here to add this episode, but you beat me to it.
The reason lumber is labeled as a carcinogen is because when you cut it with a power saw, you form very fine particles which you will inhale while working the saw. It’s not really an issue for the occasional home project but it is linked to cancers for people who work in mills, carpentry shops etc and don’t wear respirators or breathing protection.
Kind of like how food companies are adding sesame oil to products (and the ingredients list) so they don't get accused of not listing that allergen.
What? I've never seen this. I definitely see dairy products in absolutely everything. Ramen noodles? Lactose. Non-Dairy creamer (which is absolutely dairy)? Lactose. As someone with lactose intolerance and alpha gal allergy, I find it nearly impossible to completely avoid dairy products.
Long term exposure to wood dust causes lung cancer & nasal cancers. Wood dust is a Class 1 carcinogen, along with asbestos & alcohol. If whatever you're using says to wear a respirator, (like stain, stripper, etc.) wear one! I was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia 5 years ago. My 9 & 22 chromosomes decided to swap tails. An actual chromosome mutation possibly caused by chemical exposure.
Not so much a science denier in this case: my understanding is that the test in this case is incredibly strict and uses such high doses of the chemicals that many things which ordinarily in reasonable circumstances don’t cause any noticeable risk of cancer get caught up in it. So the science is often murky on whether they are actually a risk - but by the wording of the law they still have to be labeled.
>Literally everything seems to be causing cancer. Pretty much everything *is* causing cancer. At a very basic level, whenever a cell's mechanisms interact with pretty much *anything*, they have a slight chance of being thrown off and going wrong, which is what causes cancer. Some things are much more likely to disturb the mechanisms. At the extreme end you have things like hard radiation. The "this can cause cancer" labels aren't actually *wrong* in most cases. Yes, it's true that companies will slap them on without even testing to check if the "known chemicals" are in there, but it doesn't really matter; most of the time they'll be correct. Point at any random thing in your house and say "this increases my chance of cancer" and you will almost certainly be right. The problem is that this isn't saying *how much* it increases your chance of cancer. Let's say that the baseline for cancer is that in a million people, a hundred will develop cancer every year. A million people touch substance 1 and after a year, five hundred thousand of them have cancer. A million people touch substance 2 and after a year, a hundred and one of them have cancer. Both substances technically increase your risk of cancer. Substance 1 is a clear and immediate carcinogenic threat. Any reasonable person would want to stay away from it. Substance 2 is not. Most people are not worried about a one-in-a-million chance of getting cancer. The warning labels, among other issues, have such a low threshold for causing cancer that they are beyond what most people consider a "reasonable threshold".
It's far easier to slap a warning sticker on than to prove to California that your product doesn't contain bad things.
Proposition 65 effectively requires any product with any amount of any substance with any evidence at all that it causes cancer to be labeled accordingly. This sounds like a good idea in theory but things get a little murky in the real world because science is complicated and 10 studies might say a substance doesn't have any effect on cancer risk but one study says there is a correlation and you end up with a proposition 65 warning for something that most scientists don't think actually causes cancer. This leads to the warning being on countless products which almost certainly do not cause cancer which has pretty much completely defeated the purpose of informing consumers, especially when we could be educating people about things that actually cause cancer like ultraviolet radiation from the Sun, and smoking.
Because California will fine the ever living crap out of any company that doesn't have them on it whether it originates in California or not, regardless of if it could actually cause cancer or not, or even if it's products are sold in California or not. I believe that California has actually argued in the past that you could potentially get cancer from heavy metals exposure by handling cut lumber. Yes, really. You also need to realize that California has a ton of extremely low information voters that take many claims like this at face value and never once do question them, which has created a regulatory environment where many people who do not know near as much as they think they do actively campaign to add more and more stuff to those lists. Since California's government is also in a perpetual state of deficit spending, these fines also make a substantial amount of revenue for the state. So it's part blatant extortion by the state of California, part misguided campaigning for further restrictions of certain voters in California.
You have to prove the thing doesn't cause cancer, otherwise, it potentially causes cancer.
It’s a totally foreseeable consequence of a state constitution that will let you make anything part of the constitution if you can get enough signatures to put a proposition on the ballot and get enough yes votes. Like a lot of things it sounded good at the time as long as you didn’t think too hard about it. Now unless someone wants to spend a lot of time and money to repeal it—very unlikely—we are stuck with it. [We don’t have the longest one, though](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_constitutions_in_the_United_States)
Florida has the same system and it’s a joke. One year there was a law about animal husbandry regarding pigs. Since when does the general population know enough about it to make an intelligent decision? People vote those things into the constitution because the abbreviated version (also deceptively slanted) sounds good.
Idea was to use the market to encourage producers to manufacture less dangerous items. Require them to label, and they'll have to either put the effort into producing safer versions of their products or suffer the competitive consequences of selling a maybe cheaper cancer causing version of an item. Turns out the way companies procure products or inputs doesn't make knowing what's in them easy, and using and holding accountable suppliers that provide safe versions is more difficult and less profitable, so they just slap a warning on everything because the sticker is cheaper than accountable production and an overwhelmed consumer can't make an intelligent choice.
> Idea was to use the market to encourage producers to manufacture less dangerous items. If that was the intent than how dangerous something is should be part of the warning. Instead something that gives you a 1 in 10 chance of developing cancer if you use it normally for a year, and something that gives you a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of developing cancer if you consume your body weight of it daily for a year, get the same warning.
I can answer this a little more fully. Prop 65 is the CA state ruling that requires suppliers to either attest that their product does not contain one of a myriad of compounds known to be bad for us. It closely follows the European REACH legislation, with roots founded in the 50s and 60s when the chemical industry was growing rapidly and industry didn’t understand the side effect on humans. It’s intent is to drive industry to find alternatives in manufacturing, often giving years of warning before something hits the books into law. Is it costly to industry? Yes. Does it make us a healthier nation? Yes. Due to prop 75 we no longer have pthalates in flexible plastics, a very good thing. When industry cannot or won’t find alternatives, they have to label their products with a prop 65 label. Nobody really wants to do this, hence a drive to comply since CA is a huge (largest US?) market. I cannot speak to companies labeling everything just in case. In my experience we worked hard to avoid labeling and meeting requirements. Source, worked in global procurement in plastics/chemicals/construction industries.
You can sell products in the US until they are scientifically tested and proven to be dangerous, the FDC then decides if your product needs a label, or other limitation, or ban. This happens after the fact that people got hurt or scammed. In other nations incl the EU, you need to first have your product tested and proven to be harmless to legally sell it and it gets a CE mark on it. The US laws protects industry first, in EU laws protects the individual/public first.
I'm a chemist, and there is a joke amongst my circle at least stating that according to the state of California everything is carcinogenic. The reality is that these labels are Californias litigation avoidance labels, basically if everything is carcinogenic then you can't sue California because you've been warned. Stupid
Prop65 was meant to make companies change their products to switch away from dangerous ingredients. It succeeded in that to a degree, many companies reformulated their products to be safer because of it. Unfortunately it also opened a door to lawyers simply suing vendors for not having a warning label. Many small businesses didn't have the means to fight those suits and settled and ended up putting warning labels on their products as a result. If the consequences are losing lots of money, many will err on the site of caution and just put labels on anything. This overabundance of warning labels have resulted in some genuine threats flying under the radar. It was a good attempt ruined by greedy lawyers.
If you'd like a great, in-depth, well-explained answer that gives tons of background information and discusses the effects of the warning labels (including product reformulations to remove known potential carcinogens), you should check out the episode of 99 Percent Invisible all about Prop 65 warnings: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/warning-this-podcast-contains-chemicals-known-to-the-state-of-california-to-cause-cancer-or-other-reproductive-harm/
If you don’t have a label, people can sue you if they test your items and find they do have the banned chemicals and you didn’t put a notice on it The idea was to shame companies into changing the formulas used and many things did change, there were baby toys, formula, even drinking water pipes that all contained lead and lots of it which have eventually been phased out. Even white out used to have toxic chemicals in it too But many companies just slap the label on it and move on
At my last job our EHS (environmental heath and safety) director said that Prop 65 was basically a running joke among safety professionals. I mean how is the average person supposed to take it seriously when you see the labels on things like coffee? Free radical oxygen can cause cancer. What’s next are they going to put Prop 65 stickers in the air?
It's not effective in warning consumers about cancer rush. It is, however, effective in preventing sellers from marketing products as "safe" or "nontoxic".
Its just that its better to simply attach the text, just in case someone finds ANY trace of any of those chemicals (which AFAIK doest not have a lower limit, so technicallly one single molecule is enough), and then sues. WARNING: this post may expose you to chemicals which are know ln to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. It may also not expose you, I dunno, I'm a redditor, not a chemist.
This podcast episode explains it really well and the history behind it. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/99-invisible/id394775318?i=1000648134774
Considering best intentions, it was a way to warn people about allegedly cancerous chemicals. Thus, companies must put the labels on products that contain these materials if they are to be sold in California. Many natural products contain these chemicals. Not considering best intentions, it was a big payoff to lawyers who can then chase down every product they see that has any of these chemicals and get a payday. You make a product, you source materials from all over the world, are you going to chase down some supplier and subcontractor to that supplier in Mexico or India and have them prove to you that their products don't have these chemicals? To shield themselves, many companies just put the label on everything they sell in California. So now the warning means nothing. Californians finally had enough when someone went after Starbucks because coffee naturally has some of these chemicals.
One of my favourite podcasts of all time, 99% Invisible, has a whole episode on this https://open.spotify.com/episode/1j2u3hthdRM8Kg0GktsdpK?si=kAtw5jZ1QP6cIe7tLD8JSg
Wood can be a carcinogen in a couple of ways if inhaled; as smoke when burned or as wood dust.
Prop 65 is literally the definition of violating the interstate commerce clause of the US constitution and someone needs to take California all the way to the supreme court over it.