[Bob 256]

More likely, it is the vendor that issues a blanket warning for everything they sell regardless of whether there is any risk for a particular item.


Steve

You are correct - the vendor is attaching the standard statement taken from the proposition and in some cases, it might just be to be on the safe side.

[swanlefitte]

"Wear a gas mask and a veil
Then you can breathe
As long as you don't inhale"
-Tom Lehreh

[ChrisPlatt]

Nearly all non-food items I view on Amazon seem to have this warning.

Chris

[Liney]

Speaking as someone who on a professional level deals with providing safety assessments on hazardous chemicals in products on a daily basis, it is all balderdash! Yes the item may contain chemical elements or compounds that are proven to have, or suspected to have, effects which are toxic, carcinogenic or hazardous to humans but the quantity involved and the potential for exposure may be so remote that it is scaremongering from politicians and arse covering from the manufacturers lawyers to ensure you don't try and sue them.

For example, screws nuts washers etc, coated in Cadmium can still be purchased. Cadmium is a sacrificial coating designed to corrode before the fastener it is coated to corrodes. If Cadmium corrodes it produce Cadmium Oxide, which is a white powder and is carcinogenic if inhaled.

Now, the truth of the matter is thus: the coating on any screw, nut, washer etc. is a small number of microns thick (depending on the application but it may be 2 or 3 microns). A micron is 1 x 10 -6 metres or if you want imperial 3.937 x 10 -5 inches. Multiply that by the total surface area of the fastener and you could work out the quantity of Cadmium present. Unless you put one in your mouth and chew it, you are unlikely to be exposed to the full quantity of Cadmium. Even if you did chew it Cadmium is more dangerous when inhaled, so your biggest risk comes when you have a couple of hundred of these fasteners in one bag (all banging and rubbing against each other and rubbing off the cadmium) and you open the bag with your teeth while breathing through your nose.

Exposure standard for chemicals differ from country to country, but they are measured normally in parts per million per cubic metre of air (in EU and AU at least) and as a time weighted average exposure (8 hours per day over five days).

All in all if your lens contains hazardous chemicals then for it to effect you you would have to grind it to dust and be in a small room with it for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week and then all you ill do is increase the probability that it may harm you.

[clickclick]

I've also got to think all this chicken little labeling backfires, because people get so used to seeing a warning label, they ignore it. Then when the label is legitimately needed because it really is nasty stuff, they don't give it a second glance.

[normhead]

With hazardous waste cards identifying what the hazard is, how to treat it etc. it's pretty much useless information. Forests contain mushrooms hazardous to your health if ingested. As general rule, life is dangerous hazards are many. It's on you to educate yourself, but how does a general warning like this help? Almost everything contains material that in the right circumstances are hazardous.

This all falls under the heading of "doing crazy stuff is hazardous to your health." If you get crazy enough, what isn't hazardous to your health? This looks like a "lets put a sign on everything" type law.

[Liney]

This all falls under the heading of "doing crazy stuff is hazardous to your health." If you get crazy enough, what isn't hazardous to your health? This looks like a "lets put a sign on everything" type law.

You don't have to do crazy stuff, everyday stuff is equally as hazardous it's just that the risk is so low you lose it in the noise.


Everyone has a risk appetite of things they will and won't do, but even getting out of bed is risky for some people. The best we can hope is that we are blissfully unaware of how risky things are or we'd never do anything...

[Take-5-JB]

I was an industrial chemist for almost 40 years. Prop 65 is the Clean water and Toxic substance control act voted into law in 1986 by CA voters. Basically, as a company, if you manufacture, import, sell, possess, warehouse, generate in reactions, blending, compounding, or utilize something containing one or more of the 900+ naturally occurring or synthetic chemicals on the Prop 65 list without labeling you can be fined. It was referred to as the Bounty Hunter Law because any citizen, entity, or other can initiate a legal action claim and it be filed by a city, town, district, or CA state attorney and the claimant will share in the fines that result. For some companies the easiest way to protect yourself was to put a generic warning label on the product and a note on the Safety Data Sheet for the product, whether you knew or suspected something on the list existed in the material. Companies with the means would do extensive analyses and list anything they new to be there with quantities. This law impacts disposition
or use that may introduce the materials into the environment or drinking water sources. With some old lenses, there was radium or some other radioactive or toxic materials, so they are labeling old lenses to be sold to or brought into CA for sale.

JB

[clickclick]

Danger Will Robinson! The plastic in your bubble wrap may be hazardous to your health!

[pentax360]

It probably had some brass component and brass contains lead (even brass plumbing fittings).

[Wheatfield]

I've seen that warning too and I stil bought the object I wanted, and I too survived. I'm sitll here posting this, so I must be still alive., right? I'd take such warning with a grain of salt.

Just make sure that grain of salt doesn't come with a Prop 65 warning.

[robgski]

Joe Jackson said it best :
"Everything
Everything gives you cancer
Everything
Everything gives you cancer
There's no cure, there's no answer
Everything gives you cancer"

He also said:
"The LA sun can turn your brains
To scrambled eggs, it's true"

[Liney]

I've also got to think all this chicken little labeling backfires, because people get so used to seeing a warning label, they ignore it. Then when the label is legitimately needed because it really is nasty stuff, they don't give it a second glance.

Over use of labelling is a real problem, the one thing that really bugs me is the use of "Danger" signs. According to the standard, "Danger" is only supposed to be used for situations where ignoring the signage would put you in a life threatening scenario. For example, dead fronts on electrical distribution panels should have a "Danger" sign as opening the dead front would mean you can touch live wiring.

Around here the authority responsible for the distribution of electricity has a weird idea of what is appropriate. Around sub stations you will see Danger signs warning you of the presence of barbed wire, and big yellow warning signs informing you of the "Danger of Death" from electrocution.

I worked with a guy who had just come off a Naval ship building project. The rule there was that you had to put a warning sign on the entrance hatch to a compartment for every hazard you had in that compartment. He chuckled when he mentioned that in some cases they ran out of space on teh hatch to put all the signs....

Joe Jackson said it best :
"Everything
Everything gives you cancer
Everything
Everything gives you cancer
There's no cure, there's no answer
Everything gives you cancer"

I can't recall if I mentioned it previously, but one of the big US research hospitals wrote a paper a couple of years ago that basically said that with the exception of a couple of cancers that were genetically linked, the chance of you contracting cancer was pure chance. You could life in an area with naturally occuring asbestos all your life and be cancer free, but the bloke next to you smokes a few cigarettes and gets lung cancer.

[clickclick]

You could life in an area with naturally occuring asbestos all your life and be cancer free, but the bloke next to you smokes a few cigarettes and gets lung cancer.

George Burns comes to mind.

[reeftool]

Since I don't live in California, I don't worry about such things.