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Comment by csours | Hacker News Reader

I bought a large mixing bowl, and it had a California Cancer label on the bottom. It's a regular metal bowl. If you put cancer labels on everything, people will quickly ignore them.

Maybe it would be better if there was a scale on it, like this is a 1 banana equivalent risk or something, but then how do you determine my exposure to the cancer in the metal bowl.

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I was curious, so I googled:

https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/general-info/proposition...

> By law, a warning must be given for listed chemicals unless exposure is low enough to pose no significant risk of cancer

> the "no significant risk level” is defined as the level of exposure that would result in not more than one excess case of cancer in 100,000 individuals exposed to the chemical over a 70-year lifetime

That feels very strict.

Using smartphone must be falling into this category as well, no? It would be fun to see those pretty iPhone boxes with cigarette like label on it.

Also how do they test this because trial lasting 70 years with 2x 100,000 people would not be enough to conclude in most cases.

Yes, prop 65 is absurd. Pro 65 among other things requires labels on:

* Parking garages

* French fries - https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-acrylamide-warni... (This sign is real; the McDonald's by my house has one)

* Toast

* Seaweed

* Coffee has been a battleground: https://www.consumerproductslawblog.com/2019/06/what-now-cal...

* Sand

You would be hard pressed to find something that prop 65 does not require to be labelled as cancer causing.

The most comical one of these I know of is Disneyland’s, which I can only assume to be warning about cancerous IP law ;)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Disneyla...

So... are we suppose to consume... Disneyland? Like... with a knife and fork?

It's about exposure in general, not just food. The Disneyland sign is likely because they use gasoline engines in various places - same reason as parking garages. Might also be from sand in kid play areas or anything involving dust.

Every apartment building I've lived at in recent memory has one of these signs at the entrance.

> Yes, prop 65 is absurd.

...known to the state of Cancer to cause California...

Oh hi there AvE.

this is wild.

Prop 65 is a good example why citizens shouldn’t make laws. Lack of debate or understanding the consequences.

Ooooh so that is the reason of all the crazy Cancer warnings that I see in California when I go. I remember at some point while boarding an airplane in California that I saw some cancer sign in the worm-aisle (what's the name in English?) that you pass while boarding

fries - completely ok: a lot of people get in contact with them, but putting sign on them while not putting warning over any other harmfully (over)fried products seem at least illogical(yea, creating regulations doesnt work in us, or at least there's no efficient mechanism, but still)

sand - widespread construction material, i wonder why they only put label regarding cancer instead of placing usage restriction over maximum allowed radiation flux produced from square meter area of material(some decorative stones would not fit into safe range but are ok for a lifetime risk of any person)

I think that was the idea. If the warnings were effective, then business processes are affected. If consumers can be trained to ignore them, then the state looks like it's doing something for people without changing anything materially.

> then the state looks like it's doing something for people without changing anything materially.

You've just described California politics perfectly.

This is anecdotal, but one thing I have noticed about Californians is that there is a sense that government inaction is worse than government action. In other words, if there is some problem (real or perceived), the state can't simply do nothing about it. And, the politicians of California are enthusiastic about creating new bureaucracy to enforce the newly minted laws. Which they usually pay for by creating some specific tax/fee on some specific transaction or type of product, which then creates more complexity and bureaucracy.

That's the legacy of Reganomics and the collapse of the New Deal coalition. Sucks, but we'll do better soon hopefully.

s/California politics/politics/g

I think over time it helps to "dilute the brand" of government institutions, so to speak, meaning people lose faith in the effectiveness and necessity of the policies being foisted on them.

“The state” has nothing to do with it. This was voted into law by regular voters. Think of it every time someone assumes the common citizen should be involved in writing laws.

There's no penalty for putting the label on a product that has none of the substances in it. But the penalty for not putting the label on something that does end up having a carcinogen in it is very high. So it's really in the best interest of the manufacturer to just put the label on it anyway.

This is precisely the situation.

I'll take a stab at the research if you link the bowl? I'm curious now. I appreciate California's proactive stance, and I guess I fall into the minority because I do pay attention to those labels.

I think the labels are over the top. If you make people put big cancer labels on everything which causes cancer and ignore the relative risks of one versus the other, it is impossible to make a rational choice about the issue.

Even a simple color guide would be a huge help.

It should be possible to quantify the increased risk from exposure, use that to weigh disability adjusted life years, and bake a color code from that.

French fries known to cause cancer, but daily consumption would impact by <1 DALY on average -> a far less aggressive label than goes on a bottle of benzene.

> it is impossible to make a rational choice about the issue.

I think this is over-reaching. I agree there should be a better system, but I am perfectly willing to do the work and research the warning. Thus, I am able to make a rational decision based on the best information I can find. As with all science, what is rational today may change as new information becomes available. THat is the price we pay to stay informed, versus ignorance.

The current state of making everything share the same warning directly benefits the companies who sell the most dangerous chemicals.

This is literally the exact opposite outcome of what the measure is supposed to have.

Not following. Are you're saying this is "Gish Gallop" tactic [1]: flood your opponent with so much BS they can't possibly respond?

If so, I see what you are saying: the same level warning for thalidomide vs. something less deadly is a problem. If everything is bad, the bad guys sneak by?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

Process engineers know this as "alarm fatigue":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue

And it's a real thing. It kills people in hospitals because nurses tune out the constant beeps of machines.

Yep, that's what I thought you/they meant. I'm glad you admitted it, because it is clearly a matter of opinion, and it seems the only people bothered by this have similar political affiliations (if their post history is any indicator).

I think you are commingling "Think it should be fixed" with "Think it should be trashed entirely". I like the idea of warning labels. I don't like that they are currently not very good at communicating what is actually dangerous. That doesn't mean I want to get rid of them, it means I want them improved.

Mate, going by politics alone I'd wager "those people" would write my opinions off – I'd get called a filthy statist at best, and if they only knew what I really believed... ;)

But I think you've got this wrong. I absolutely want to know what my exposure is to carcinogens, but in the absence of context it isn't helpful. Very few people are equipped to understand and evaluate the real risks they face – and I count myself in this bucket. That's why regulations and governments are a good thing. That's why I want meaningful warning labels that indicate what risks I face over time, not just "there's a carcinogen here".

I can verify. In the ED I work at, we recently "upgraded" our monitors for vitals in every room. The new system has insanely ill-thought-out defaults that cannot be changed - the settings revert with every new patient. A patient moving a little and thus creating artifact in his/her cardiac rhythm frequently triggers a "v-tach" alarm. It sometimes signals the v-tach alarm even if the patient is in normal sinus rhythm with a slightly widened QRS. If a patient removes the pulse ox for just enough time for the machine to alarm, but then puts it back on, the machine will continue WAILING until somebody can shut it off. Unfortunately, if that patient happens to be a COVID-suspected or positive patient, we do not just walk in the room and fix the issue. The respiratory rate measurement takes its measurement from the cardiac rhythm signal. It works sometimes, but I never have found it to be reliable or accurate. However, the machines default to sounding the exact same loud alarm if it thinks somebody is apneic (nevermind an SPO2 of 100% with a good waveform). Since there are so many rooms being monitored at the staff station all at once, the exact same alarm goes off almost every minute for one thing or another. Ok, here is the point of my agreement with parent - the usual alarm tone went off on a patient with an all-too-familiar "V-Tach" message. I hit the button to silence the stupid thing and found a button to "view event". I hit that button (feeling very annoyed again) just for the sake of never having seen that function yet (like I said, the system is new). What do you know... the patient was in a run of v-tach for several seconds. Pretty useful diagnostic information (and if they never converted, pretty damn important to know to keep them alive).

I agree, and I'd rather know than not know. Especially with things like off-gassing formaldehyde in furniture. It's easy to look around and find something without formaldehyde in it.

So I'm curious what was in the bowl. Is it possible that it had a coating of some sort? The CA website doesn't list kitchen products as a category...

https://www.p65warnings.ca.gov/

Do you take action based on the labels? I've thought about it, but half the things I own have them, and in some cases it's illegal to make non-california-cancerous alternatives (fire-retardant furniture).

To the best of my ability. I like being informed as much as possible. But sometimes, yes, it _IS_ exhausting. But that is part of the price we pay to live in a world/country that basically wants to poison us for profit.

Those who decide what gets a label have no downside to adding the wrong thing, and no upside to incorrectly leaving the label off something. As such if there is even the slightest possibility they mandate the label. Few bother to fight them, so everything has the label.

Roundup is the only case I know of that was successful: it has been well studied and found not cancerous in the vast majority of studies. So the few exceptions are not enough that they can be forced to but a label on - but it is still listed by California, it just doesn't have a label. Based on this success a few others are trying to get their label removed, but I'm not aware of other success.

> found not cancerous in the vast majority of studies

I just spent 30 minutes googling and found the opposite, with CDC, WHO, EPA and EU all in disagreement with one another! Forbes, NYT, and several other sites indicate increases in leukemia, other new evidence, and even a $10B settlement by Bayer (Monsanto's owner) that will keep evidence sealed.

IMO, this is clearly not settled.

So I choose to make a rational decision to NOT to spray RoundUp on my lawn, and to try, to the best of my ability, to avoid purchasing products exposed to it. Hence, I would like a warning label. But if cannot avoid it due to opaque laws, then bummer.

The burden of proof in a court case doesn't require any science. Roundup is used in large quantities by farmers, but the rates of cancer are different only for reasons that are already explained by known causes. in expected amounts.

I bought it in person at a Korean grocery. It doesn't have any manufacturer label.

Oh, that explains it. I'd steer clear of that. I have two very large Asian grocery stores in my city and there ain't no way I'm going to eat premade frozen bao, gyoza, or noodles manufactured at some sketchball factory in Shenzhen!

Prop 65 cancer labeling did actually reduce the incidence of many of the more potent carcinogens in products when it was first enacted. So in that sense it was very successful.

But because of the wording of the measure (no penalty for falsely labeling something as having carcinogens when it doesn't), and how many things can be considered carcinogens (caffeine is just one example), the effectiveness of the label was diluted dramatically in people's minds.

<not-helpful-comment>

The ink on the label might cause cancer. Shouldn't the cancer label have a label on it?

</not-helpful-comment>

This would mean that the companies that put the label on their otherwise inocuous products "just in case" are in fact correct. A self fulfilling prophecy.

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