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Comment by annoyingnoob | Hacker News Reader

Prop 65 went off the deep end a long time ago. When you call any and everything a carcinogen then people stop paying attention. I'm willing to take the risks to drink coffee for example. I know french fries are bad for me, but cancer isn't my first concern there.

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The main problem with Prop 65 is that it was done by ballot proposition -- through California's initiative process. That is, the proposed law was voted up or down by the people AS IS. As opposed to being created through the normal legislative process that would have allowed for sensible changes (as well as probable neutering by opponents). The initiative process is a form of direct democracy intended to bypass/override the legislature. As such, it is difficult to tweak Prop 65 legislatively for needed fixes that would make it more effective.

This is one example of why most things that are proposed should not actually be done through the initiative process, IMHO. As a Californian, my default bias on ALL ballot propositions has become NO until proven well-written.

That said, I'd rather have Prop 65 as imperfect as it is than nothing. It occasionally gives me actionable information.

There is a spot somewhere between abstinence and gluttony where you can live well and keep your risks under control. I think I'd rather live a little and take my chances - as long as its my choice. I'm with you generally, its good to have notice, but not all science is correct/settled and we need thresholds.

I believe this is the "Argument to Moderation" logical fallacy [0].

> Argument to moderation is the fallacy that the truth is a compromise between two opposing positions.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

I'm saying that I can't eat french fries everyday, but once in say 15 days isn't so bad. That isn't true of Benzene. Prop 65 would warn you to abstain from many things, many things that need more science.

Let me tell you about Swiss direct democracy. If an initiative comes up, parliament can amend the law and tell the people, hey look, we already improved the law, you can reject the initiative, or make a rejectable counter-proposal, or even both. It's sometimes complicated and it doesn't always produce something I would call nice but more often than not the outcome is better than acceptable.

I once heard that almost everything that gets into you slightly increases your risk of cancer (water is the exception), but there are different levels of risk. Some compounds will practically guarantee that you get tumors (like radiation, also benzene is really bad), but others are really negligible (like coffee or junk food, especially if you consume it rarely).

So the important part is how much these compounds increase your risk of cancer. If a single day's exposure to a new car increases your risk of cancer enough to be noticeable than there's an issue. Otherwise just don't expose yourself to the smell often and you should be fine.

Can't they just grade the carcinogenic risk? Maybe color-code it into different levels?

Seems it would make more sense to either ban the chemicals completely or do nothing at all. Most people have essentially learned to ignore the P65 warning and I have noticed that not all businesses are compliant with it anyway.

> not all businesses are compliant with it anyway

Pretty risky, just waiting for the wrong lawyer to notice.

It would increase cost of compliance -- or mostly everyone would just stick to the most extreme level, to cover their asses.

Many things marked with the Prop 65 warning do not actually contain anything carcinogenic (or rather, since everything is carcinogenic to some degree, they contain no more than trace amounts.) Legally, if a business has a Prop 65 warning, they're safe; if they don't, they're not.

The only teeth Prop 65 has against excessive warnings is that it makes consumers like me nervous, so it's better to not have it. If it were a little more sane -- like being based on actual exposure from reasonably expected usage -- then I think I'd like it, even if the list of chemicals is still a bit overzealous.

The system is too heavily tilted in favor of exposing people to nasty crap, and I appreciate having something that pushes against it. It's a hard thing to do well, and legislating via ballot initiative is a blunt instrument. So the best we generally end up with is stuff like Prop 65, which does some good, some harm.

> It would increase cost of compliance

What's the mechanism that the proposition puts in place? What makes an article be marked by the warning? Does the vendor have to report on the compounds their product contains? Or is there a state-conducted examination?

Exactly. Life is bad for you and leads to death. New car smell is just another minute of pleasure that someone felt compelled to discredit by research and documentation.

Maybe I don't realize the threat level.

Chance of dying in a car crash, 1 in 77. https://www.cars.com/articles/are-the-odds-ever-in-your-favo...

Chance of dying from cancer, 1 in 5. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-basics/lifetime-probabi...

That's not really a fair comparison because you can only accumulate car crash risk when you're commuting, but you're accumulating cancer risk for every moment you're alive.

OK, but when I walk to the nursery every morning, we can take the quick route down the big road with traffic jams, or I can go 5-10 minutes out of our way on roads with no traffic and through a park.

Similarly, every time I'm out walking I try and not walk on the large roads with lots of traffic, it all adds up.

Per my french fry comment, I'm still more worried about my heart.

https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-o...

> car crash risk when you're commuting

Pedestrians are killed by cars, quite often. They are 1 out of every 6 vehicle fatalities. There's also per-trip associated risk which is separate from per-mile risk.

Walking is also a form of commuting.

If you live long enough, everyone will get cancer. Lots of people abuse their hearts enough that they die from that first but some disease get more and more prominent as you age. These are the reasons that we don't recommend testing for colon cancer at age 15 for most people.

You can remove your risk of dying in a car crash simply by staying at home, away from roads.

You can't remove your risk of cancer.

If you were enclosed in a windowless box with sufficient food, water, and air to live then it would be a race to see which would kill you first: boredom or cancer.

Eventually we all have to die of something. Evolution does a great job optimizing for protecting us against ailments that kill us before breeding age, but a pretty crap job of keeping us safe from things that kill us in old age. Cancer is a major cause of death as we age because it gets more likely the older you get. You can certainly take steps to avoid making yourself extraordinarily vulnerable (don't hang out around tons of radiation, wear sunblock, don't smoke, etc) but enjoying the smell of a new car seems unlikely to be the factor that suddenly means you will die of cancer.

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