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Comment by Qworg | Hacker News Reader

This exists - many manufacturing companies get hit up by chemical engineers who discover something in their product, backed by a lawyer. They get damages + fees and the product gets a "This is known to cause cancer in the State of California".

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Are you sure you mean chemical engineer and not chemist? Chemical engineers are usually more concerned with, e.g., how to produce something to a certain level of purity, designing a process or plant to work effectively, etc.

When a company I was working for received these, they were generally from chemical engineers (by title), but chemists showed up sometimes too.

I think the engineering part comes in from the testing for a battery of things.

To be fair, everything gets "This is known to cause cancer in the State of California". The only thing that label tells you is that the state of California likes to pointlessly sacrifice lab animals.

Everyone loves to give California a hard time, but they've done more to bring US product safety into the 21st century than any other US state. I'd describe California and the EU as being similar, and the rest of the US to be worse than either (some by far).

Fortunately since international companies want to sell all over the US and Europe, it has meant that this is the new baseline most of them shoot for. "Legal in California" means legal in the US (and likely EU).

It is better for everyone. It really is.

So, because they've done good they are immune from criticism?

Off the top of my head, I've witnessed this label at parking garages and Starbucks drink counters. For public locations, if the label's concern were legitimate wouldn't it be appropriate to fix the situation instead of just fostering an environment of ignored signage and faux consent?

Is there a reason you frame every argument as a hyperbole?

The cancer argument California politicians follow is based on non-scientific or non-conclusive research. The legislation that dictates this is Proposition 65 and its considered a public policy failure. Its the anti-vax and holistic crowds dictating policy.

It also has the secondary effect of making REAL cancer warnings seem trivial. "Oh cigarettes are bad? So are electric cords and pepsi according to California!"

Can you cite any research to back your position?

Absurd regulations (like putting worthless "product may cause cancer" labels on everything) have resource costs. These resources could be put to better use.

A lot of CA regulation is like the TSA. The cost per life saved (or harm avoided / prevented) is astronomical. There are far better uses for the resources squandered.

> It is better for everyone. It really is.

Except of course when they get it wrong and have to reverse course, as seen in the news over the last several years in the case of flame retardants for furniture.

What's the latest verdict on flame retardants? Last I heard, the conclusion was that they are carcinogenic, but you have to weigh the risk of dying of cancer in twenty years against the risk of dying in a fire tomorrow, and the best guess seemed to be that they save more lives than they cost.

Lately, the dialogue is skewed against flame retardant treatments, though this is probably as much because of Toxic Hot Seat as anything else.

So, my sense of the current "wisdom" is that the cancer and toxicity issues are significant, especially for firefighters, and the retardants offer relatively little protection against fires. A big factor in the turnaround is that the California standards were primarily concerned about protecting against dropped lit cigarettes, and so many fewer people smoke, particularly indoors.

Law of unintended consequences?

http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2012/11/15/pbdes-and-neurodev...

edit I didn't notice but zerocrates had already pointed this out.

And what would the label say if it was Texas? "Materials meet FDA GRAS specifications?"

Oh wait there wouldn't be one.

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