NY Times Wirecutter has a decent article on the subject.Have you ever seen anything that didn’t carry the commiefornika proposition cancer warning?
Within it:
By the way, zojirushi makes really nice stuff. I love my rice cooker made by them. Reading reviews, most people end up getting 20+ years of life out of zojirushi rice cookers.As e-commerce business continues to grow and inventory travels across state lines, we’ve seen more companies put the labels on everything—even on items that aren’t necessarily bound for California—to avoid being sued. A representative of Zojirushi America Corp., which produces several items we recommend (including our favorite travel mug and food thermos), told us that the company labels everything sold in the US and through e-commerce.
The Prop 65 label is like a noisy alarm that rings equally loudly about smaller amounts of low-risk substances and huge amounts of potentially harmful chemicals. The labels don’t say how much of the chemical is present, or how much it would really take to make a person sick. You could get the same alarming label on potato chips (acrylamide), chemotherapy (uracil mustard), lumber (wood dust), or toxic runoff (arsenic). It’s obviously helpful to be alerted to the presence of potentially harmful chemicals. But not all doses of these different chemicals mean the same thing.
Imagine if a warning label accompanied every risk you took on a regular basis, from driving on the freeway to baking gel nail polish under UV light. Fear is powerful, but it should be commensurate with the danger, and the Prop 65 label tends to equalize risk in a way that actually might actively harm people’s ability to judge danger.
At its best, Prop 65 has resulted in changes in product formulation to remove or reduce potentially harmful chemicals, including in things like Wite-outand herbicides. Awareness raised by Prop 65 led Coke to change its use of 4-MEI, a potential carcinogen found in some caramel coloring.
But these Prop 65 labels can make even low-risk situations seem dicey. The Zojirushi representative explained that the company has the labels for the chemicals used in power cords (bisphenol A), packaging (styrene), and the sticker on the outside of its models (Di-n-Butyl phthalate), but said buyers probably won’t interact much with any of these. “None of these materials come into contact with your food or beverage,” the representative said.
Given the breadth of the proposition, and companies aversion to being sued, I wouldn’t be surprised if the dumb warning is put on everything we buy soon enough.