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Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

But those California Safe Harbor limits are not normal safety limits. Those safe harbour limits are when you need to put a sticker saying "contains chemicals known by the state of california to cause cancer" (or birth defects).

This law suit is not about supplying a product with dangerous levels of lead, (because if it had dangerous levels of lead the regulators would have intervened and recalled all stocks and yu wouldn't still be able to buy it) but of supplying a product that contains some lead and not putting a warning sticker on the product.

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The fact that "25 times the legal limit of lead allowed to prevent reproductive damage" is being downplayed in any way is slightly disturbing.

If this notice is not addressed, you will see regulators intervening.

Pretty much everything is known to the state of california to cause cancer. The furnace in my basement has this label (and I don't live in california).

But the only difference after regulation is the inclusion of a sticker!

You seem to think the safe harbor limits are realistic safety limits, but the safe harbor limits for lead are 5ug per day. That's much lower than any other regulation.

WHO have here http://www.inchem.org/documents/jecfa/jecmono/v44jec12.htm

> (Annex 1, reference 30), when a provisional tolerable weekly intake (PTWI) of 3 mg of lead per person, equivalent to 50 µg/kg bw, was established. This PTWI was reconfirmed by the Committee at its twenty-second meeting (Annex 1, reference 47). At its thirtieth meeting (Annex 1, reference 73), the Committee assessed the risk posed by lead to the health of infants and children and established a PTWI of 25 µg/kg bw for this population group. The Committee again evaluated lead at its forty-first meeting (Annex 1, reference 107),

(PDF so not able to copy and paste) but current PTWI is 25ug per kg for all people. The prop65 level of 5ug is much lower than that.

>because if it had dangerous levels of lead the regulators would have intervened and recalled all stocks and yu wouldn't still be able to buy it

What is this extreme reliance on 'the regulators' (who?)?

Less than one-hundred years ago, radiation exposure used to be highly commercialized and casual.

>This law suit is not about supplying a product with dangerous levels of lead

What is the meaning of the sticker, "contains chemicals that cause cancer", if not, "this product is dangerous"?

In America the regulator would be the FDA or EPA for most items in the Safe Harbor list. If you have evidence that Soylent contains dangerous levels of lead or cadmium you can present it to the FDA who will then intervene on your behalf - they have the power to remove Soylent from the market, to force Soylent to recall product, impose fines etc.

The sticker tells you that the product contains some amount of something. It doesn't tell you what it contains, nor how much it contains. All you know is that at least one of a list of several hundred chemicals is present in more than (for some examples) trace amounts.

For example, the California safe harbor level of lead is 15ug per day. The WHO has a provisional tolerable weekly intake of 25ug per kg of bodyweight, or about 1.5 mg per week.

The California safe harbor levels work out to be 15 ug * 7 which is 105 ug, or 0.105 mg per week. That 0.105 mg per week is very much lower than WHO's 1.5 mg per week.

Note that there are penalties for not including the note if you need it, but not for including the note if you don't need it. Your product could be totally free of anything and still carry the warning because you want to avoid the risk of sticker non-compliance.

Prop 65 warnings must include the specific harmful chemicals the product is exposing you to as well as the manner in which it is exposing you.

Do you have a cite for that? This page lists the requirements for the contents of the warning label, and the specifics of the chemical type and qty are not mentioned in the consumer products exposure warning section.

http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65/law/pdf_zip/RegsArt6.pdf

Do you have any example prop 65 warning labels for food items that list the specific chemical and qty?

Are you talking about occupational exposure warnings? Is that relevant to this court case?

I never claimed that the warning needs to include a specific qty.

From your own source, California Code of Regulations,

Title 27, Article 6. Clear and Reasonable Warnings, § 25601 Clear and Reasonable Warnings

>The message must clearly communicate that the chemical in question is known to the state to cause cancer, or birth defects or other reproductive harm.

The original proposition requires Clear and Reasonable Warnings:

>25249.6. Required Warning Before Exposure To Chemicals Known to Cause Cancer Or Reproductive Toxicity. No person in the course of doing business shall knowingly and intentionally expose any individual to a chemical known to the state to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity without first giving clear and reasonable warning to such individual, except as provided in Section 25249.10

Again, from your source, California Code of Regulations,

Title 27, Article 6. Clear and Reasonable Warnings, § 25603 Consumer Products Warnings

>(a) Warnings for consumer products exposures that include the methods of transmission and the warning messages as specified by this section shall be deemed to be clear and reasonable.

So, not only do you have to warn of harm from the specific chemicals you use in your consumer product, but also of those harmful chemicals that may have unintentionally ended up in your product. Further, the clear and reasonable warning you give should include specifically how that product will expose you to harmful chemicals (e.g. eating/drinking this Soylent will expose you to potentially harmful amounts of lead [don't know, we didn't test it, lol!]; or, eating/drinking this Soylent will expose you to X.Y (m/c/k)g of lead, which is known to the State of California to cause cancer or reproductive harm).

You are misreading that document.

"Methods of transmission" refers to how the warning is communicated, and does not refer to how the chemical is transfered to the user.

Nothing you quote says the chemical has to be named. A generic "this product contains chemicals known by the state of california to cause [birth defects / cancer]" is sufficient.

Your last paragraph is wrong.

In this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10067135 you said "What is the meaning of the sticker, "contains chemicals that cause cancer", if not, "this product is dangerous"?" -- a prop 65 label does not mean a product is dangerous! In California dangerous food would be regulated by the California deparment for public health or the food and drug administration. Your suggestion - that people could sell a food product with a dangerous amount of lead in it so long as they stick a label on it - is odd. The safe harbor limits are provided so that the labels don't go on everything. They are not risky levels of those chemicals.

From http://www.oehha.ca.gov/prop65/background/p65plain.html

> For chemicals that are listed as causing cancer, the "no significant risk level” is defined as the level of exposure that would result in not more than one excess case of cancer in 100,000 individuals exposed to the chemical over a 70-year lifetime. In other words, a person exposed to the chemical at the “no significant risk level” for 70 years would not have more than a “one in 100,000” chance of developing cancer as a result of that exposure.

> For chemicals that are listed as causing birth defects or reproductive harm, the “no observable effect level” is determined by identifying the level of exposure that has been shown to not pose any harm to humans or laboratory animals. Proposition 65 then requires this “no observable effect level” to be divided by 1,000 in order to provide an ample margin of safety. Businesses subject to Proposition 65 are required to provide a warning if they cause exposures to chemicals listed as causing birth defects or reproductive harm that exceed 1/1000th of the “no observable effect level.”

Perhaps you think I am pro-Soylent? I am not. I think they're fucking idiots, and I've said that on HN before.

What? Are you arguing the warnings are meaningless then? Purely a syntactical hurdle to overcome with no bearing on the apparent truth of the statement being conveyed?

>Nothing you quote says the chemical has to be named.

...

My first quote did...

"From your own source, California Code of Regulations, Title 27, Article 6. Clear and Reasonable Warnings, § 25601 Clear and Reasonable Warnings >The message must clearly communicate that the chemical in question is known to the state to cause cancer, or birth defects or other reproductive harm. "

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