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Comment by leonixyz | Hacker News Reader

The most hilarious thing to me in this story is the PR guy who replied "most of the things sold in the US these days require warnings about causing cancer". And everybody seems fine with that. LOL

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It's ridiculous, but maybe not the way you think; Prop 65 in California classified a lot of things as requiring notification, including things like "Wood Dust." so now every apartment building has a sign in the hallway that says "this building may contain chemicals" and everyone ignores it. The law has lead to people being less informed rather than more informed.

I despise Prop 65 warnings in principle, but the damnable thing about them is they may actually have some effectiveness, if this study is to be believed ( https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11651356/ ): "Levels of certain chemicals listed under California’s law have declined in biosamples from people across the nation. ... Although the law did not require changes to product formulations or processes, interviews with representatives of affected companies have indicated that many businesses did alter formulations to avoid having to post warnings or manufacture special products just for California."

The study has a lot of limitations, and NHANES is not really designed for this kind of analysis, but it sounds like the warnings do well as a cudgel to beat manufacturers with even if regular individuals ignore them. Even more interesting is the knock-on effects Prop 65 has on people outside of California. Overall it seems like an argument to keep them around, sort of.

Also coffee.

I've recommended that we just put up signs on the Interstate highways entering CA...

I remember when I first bought a knife either made in USA or just targeted at that market (not sure: I mean, I don't think it was the first thing I bought made by an USA company, but I've never seen that warning before), and found that warning inside the package I was quite puzzled, like WTF, I though I was buying a good knife, not some recycled hazardous waste-material or whatever this is. Then, of course, I googled and found out that they stick it on pretty much anything, so that plastic handle is probably just like any plastic handle of any knife I held before. But still it was very weird.

They're as silly as they sound. Growing up, there was a sign when you enter the school's bus storage and maintenance area. More recently, I've seen them at Starbucks (for coffee), in the vinegar section of the grocery store, and on untreated lumber.

This isn't California being California, but it is well-meaning legislation getting out-of-hand because of enforcement mechanisms. It's like website cookie warnings. It was a nice idea, but it lead to a silly place.

Replying because I remembered coffee too, and had to look it up. ‘Good’(?) news is that it was decided in 2019(!) that coffee does not require a Prop 65 warning.

https://www.p65warnings.ca.gov/fact-sheets/coffee-and-propos...

Whenever I see these warnings in the wild, I (jokingly... mostly) think to myself: "well I don't have to worry about getting cancer from this because I live in Texas now, not California"

Prop 65 is frequently joked about but at the time it was a resounding success. The drawback is that any item being sold in California that doesn't pay for the extensive testing (to confirm it doesn't contain any of the thousand chemicals on the list from 1985), ends up carrying the label that the item might cause cancer. If Wikipedia is too dry for you, there's a podcast that explains the history and facts well https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/warning-this-podcast-...

I once walked into a hospital that had a prop 65 warning on the door.

I caught that too, though I believe the California warnings are generally of the form "if you can't prove nothing in there causes cancer, then it might cause cancer."

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