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Comment by malcolmgreaves | Hacker News Reader

What an absolute waste of everyone's time.

Prop 65 has such a high false positive rate that it's worthless; it does nothing to inform nor protect citizens. When there's a sign on everything, the "warning" doesn't matter anymore. Moreover, just because something has a carcinogen doesn't automatically mean it's unhealthy nor that it will harm you.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3575799 [2] http://www.businessinsider.com/almost-everything-causes-canc... [3] https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/general-info/kno... [4] https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/08/15/17-carcinogenic...

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> Prop 65 has such a high false positive rate that it's worthless

Tinfoil: The people that actually elevate cancer risk by a significant amount but get drowned out by the noise must be very happy about this.

Unfortunately, the judge can't consider that. He didn't rule on whether or not the law is a stupid waste of time and money, he ruled that the existing [stupid] law, as written, applies.

Someone else should get a ballot measure to improve or repeal the law. I think the idea behind the law is good, but the short-sighted implementation makes it useless.

I like imagining a much better world in which we could have a Bureau of Stupid Identification. They'd have no power other than to point to something some other part of the government did and say, That is Hereby Declared Officially Stupid.

It would never work, because we can't have nice things. But a boy can dream.

If you proposed this it would just become a tool of partisan bickering anyway. This department would spend the first month when a new government is in office declaring everything they ideologically oppose from the previous government as stupid.

" I think the idea behind the law is good, but the short-sighted implementation makes it useless."

As with most laws...

Warning: this warning contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.

> doesn't automatically mean it's unhealthy nor that it will harm you.

Examples: sunshine, candles, birth control

It would be a delightful piece of vandalism if people slapped stickers dating "Sunshine is known to the state of California to cause cancer" on all the moronic notices.

How about writing the warning in the sky, say hourly?

Realistically, sunshine has caused more cancers than every nuclear disaster added together.

If we could, we would absolutely ban it. It is grossly unsafe.

Except for what happens when you get no sunshine.

Living is unsafe.

Also sunshine got more dangerous with the ozone layer depletion (man-made)

Yep, let's fit warnings in birthing suites that 100% of all children born will die.

We need more vigilance from Captain Obvious, who has been slacking off.

Probably causes more cancers each day than every nuclear disaster added together. On the other hand, without sunshine, the Earth would be frozen world covered with ice, void of life.

That is actually a counter-example, as many people make an effort to reduce the damage they receive from the sun.

That is true, but many other people put in substantial effort to increase it. :/

And the lower vitamin D levels due to this effort to block UV might be increasing the cancer rate instead of decreasing it.

Those are all very dangerous if not taken in moderation, and many people are unaware of just how dangerous they are.

You can ignore it if you like but don't take the choice away from me. I'm rarely in california but I have seen these warnings while traveling there and on products that are distributed throughout the United States. I'm not well educated in biology or chemistry fields and these signs and labels have made me want to investigate, or at least think about something that I normally wouldn't. Because of these I have considered secondhand tobacco smoke (signs in hotels), benzene (on fuel (petrol) dispensers), lead in brass (plumbing fittings), asbestos (automotive brakes, clutches, gaskets), and many others. I think I make better decisions as a result: telling my kid that if he can smell petrol he's too close, and making sure a brass fitting is RoHS if it's used to convey water but I don't always wash my hands after I handle an air hose with brass fittings.

There are prop 65 warnings for sand. "This facility performs sandblasting operations. Sand contains silica, a chemical known to the state of California to cause cancer."

You can't tell me that this is giving you useful information. The noise is drowning out the signal.

Sandblasting operations are a long-recognized hazard. Not only can you get silicosis but sandblasting is an abrasive process and what else besides the sand is hanging around in the air? Tiny bits of the substrate metal? Zinc (galvanizing coating), Cadmium (another plating), Chromate (paint), Lead (paint)? Is a cured cyanoacrylate paint passivated enough that it's safe to breathe its dust?

When I was a kid I didn't have anyone to tell me and no reminders to wear a respirator.

Edit: after submitting, I realized I've never used "silicon" sand as a blasting abrasive, but only glued to paper or cloth. I typically blast with aluminium oxide, coal slag, or glass beads.

That's a good reason to have a meaningful warning sign up ("do not breathe sandblasting dust"). Unfortunately the prop 65 warning has exactly the opposite effect - hahaha yeah sand whatever - which left me with a false sense of security.

>but don't take the choice away from me

You do realize you can research everything you ingest. Nobody bars you from it.

And there is a public health risk to worthless warning labels. Not to mention the unstated economic cost of trying to navigate and implement these worthless regulations.

> Because of these I have considered secondhand tobacco smoke (signs in hotels), benzene (on fuel (petrol) dispensers), lead in brass (plumbing fittings), asbestos (automotive brakes, clutches, gaskets), and many others.

If the regulations were limited to chemicals with the amount of evidence of harm that these examples have, there would be fewer people with issues.

Instead they get applied to these... and coffee, and sand, and lots of other things with very little evidence of harm, to the point that it stops being a signal of evidence of harm and starts being meaningless noise.

Also, the science behind carcinogen testing isn't exactly perfect. Ames testing (put cells on petri dishes, expose each dish to a varying degree of substance under test, plot results), for example, is subject to all sorts of problems related to the many, many ex-vivo variables those cells are exposed to simultaneously.

> What an absolute waste of everyone's time.

..and (tax payer) money.

Prop. 65 is stupid, but it is not the judge’s job to evaluate then wisdom of the people in adopting the mandate, it is the judge’s job to apply the law.

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