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Main Forums => The Bass Zone => Topic started by: Barklessdog on August 05, 2018, 04:23:43 AM

Title: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: Barklessdog on August 05, 2018, 04:23:43 AM
Guitars that have nickel plated/chrome hardware will have to carry a warning Label sold in California.

WARNING; This product contains nickel which in known to cause Cancer and birth defects in the state of California.

Are you going to buy your kid a guitar that says this guitar causes cancer?

In our day and age of Online sales where distributors do not want special labeled products for California only, they want everything for everyone labeled which is going to effect the sales of a lot of products, plus signed legal documents that say manufactures are compliant with prop 65.

The state is not enforcing it, but bounty hunter lawyers are, so companies fear lawsuits so they are enforcing it. The list has 900 + thing listed!
Lawyers typically threaten then force a settlement between $20,000 - $50,000.

We have to dispose of all our dimes, nickels, and quarters.

https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/general-info/cancer-warning-labels-based-on-californias-proposition-65.html
Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: clankenstein on August 05, 2018, 01:51:09 PM
Thank god for this warning label idea, I for one am habitually licking my nickel pickup cover and on cold nights was keeping it safe and warm in my Anus .Who knew what outrageous harm i was exposing myself to,thank god for these Selfless Right thinking individuals Coming to my Rescue.Phew.

Nickel dust seems to be a problem,so i guess playing my bass with an angle grinder is out for now.
What is the safe level? How many pickups can i eat before i have to put a dangerous product sticker on my forehead?
Damn its getting dangerous to be a Bass player.

Concerned of Kapiti.
Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: Dave W on August 05, 2018, 11:39:52 PM
Prop 65 is what happens when politicians who have never worked a day in their lives make laws that affect products they know nothing about. The list gets more ridiculous by the year. What next? oxygen?
Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: Denis on August 06, 2018, 05:30:12 AM
Nickel allergies are a real thing and it's well known in the medical device industry. Implantable devices like staples, ligating clips, etc often had nickel in them. When it was discovered that a decent percentage of the population had nickel allergies, which are compounded when the device is inside your body, manufacturers started offering implantable in titanium, tantalum and certain polymers.

Nickel is also a component of the chroming process, which is pretty toxic and sites which formerly handled or produced components of the process often require serious environmental cleanup.
Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: Dave W on August 06, 2018, 06:52:58 AM
Nickel allergies are a real thing and it's well known in the medical device industry. Implantable devices like staples, ligating clips, etc often had nickel in them. When it was discovered that a decent percentage of the population had nickel allergies, which are compounded when the device is inside your body, manufacturers started offering implantable in titanium, tantalum and certain polymers.

Nickel is also a component of the chroming process, which is pretty toxic and sites which formerly handled or produced components of the process often require serious environmental cleanup.

Yes, nickel allergies are real. This has nothing to do with allergies. Nickel and nickel plated products are not carcinogenic in their finished states. Likewise with many other elements and compounds on the California lists.
Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: Pilgrim on August 06, 2018, 08:02:24 AM
Interesting. The following is taken from the news story linked in the first post:

[“As part of the law, businesses selling products to people in California must provide clear and reasonable warnings” before knowingly exposing people to any chemical on the list, unless the expected level of exposure would pose no significant cancer risk. This warning is often in the form of a label on the product or its packaging.

The law defines “no significant risk” as a level of exposure that would cause no more than 1 extra case of cancer in 100,000 people over a 70-year lifetime. So a compound can be unlabeled if a person exposed to the substance at the expected level for 70 years is estimated to have a 1 in 100,000 chance or less of getting cancer due to that exposure. The law also has similar strict cutoff levels for birth defects and reproductive harm.]

So it appears that the burden lies on the manufacturer or seller to determine the risk level, which, at least in the case of the seller, they are neither educated nor equipped to do. The chance of causing cancer cited in that text is so minuscule that it seems to me other environmental factors would cause much greater threats, and the influence of a nickel-plated object would be unmeasurable and unprovable.

In such a case, the smart thing to do to avoid frivolous or opportunistic lawsuits would seem to be to label darn near everything.

An allergic reaction to nickel is quite different from a cause of cancer (as far as I know), but there may even be some charlatan who is ready to argue that A can lead to B.

This appears to me to be one of those well-meaning laws that will require a number of cases to move through court in order to establish enough case law that those making and selling a variety of products have some level of guidance about where the need for labeling exists and where it does not.  I don't view it as "them damn environmentalists agin," although if the article is accurate, I think the law is poorly and vaguely written in terms of the evidence of harm required.
Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: patman on August 06, 2018, 08:29:00 AM
I recently purchased a dining set that has one of these warnings underneath every piece...guess the finishing materials are potentially cancer causing
Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: Highlander on August 06, 2018, 02:25:53 PM
... What next? oxygen?

Incredibly dangerous material... do you have any idea of the risk if it comes into contact with fuel and a spark...? A Car...  :mrgreen:
Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: exiledarchangel on August 06, 2018, 02:46:42 PM
Prop 65 is what happens when politicians who have never worked a day in their lives make laws that affect products they know nothing about. The list gets more ridiculous by the year. What next? oxygen?

:D
Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: clankenstein on August 06, 2018, 02:54:09 PM
Dihydrogen Monoxide - scary stuff, i found some in my water bottle once.
Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: Barklessdog on August 06, 2018, 04:57:42 PM
Let’s not forget a major alloy in stainless steel is nickel, so your sink, silverware. pots and pans cause cancer. Bass strings included.

Look at the list, alchohol, diesel smoke, nearly everything we touch causes cancer.

Stupid rules, made by stupid people meaning well, I guess?
Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: Dave W on August 06, 2018, 11:36:09 PM
I recently purchased a dining set that has one of these warnings underneath every piece...guess the finishing materials are potentially cancer causing

Non-water-based finishes usually are potentially cancer causing -- in their liquid states. That's why finishers take precautions. But the volatiles aren't present in the finished products. They disappear when the finish is completely dried and any off-gassing is over with. Try explaining that to a regulator who wouldn't be able to glue two popsicle sticks together. Oh wait... the glue!

Also, just about anything that burns will give off toxic gases that can usually be carcinogenic. If I lived in California, guess I'd have to put warnings on my maple trees, just in case.
Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: Chris P. on August 07, 2018, 01:07:17 AM
Dihydrogen Monoxide - scary stuff, i found some in my water bottle once.


 :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: lowend1 on August 07, 2018, 06:16:18 AM
California, home of the hot rod and custom car culture, throwing shade at chrome plating. ???
Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: exiledarchangel on August 07, 2018, 12:32:23 PM
There is a cure on this nickel-chrome menace, and it is called BLACK HARDWARE. But I am sure those commissars from cali will find something "not right" about that too...
Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: Barklessdog on August 08, 2018, 05:31:12 PM
There is also black nickel.

The idiocrosy is it started about thinks that leech into the water supply that cause cancer, but then it was white washed to include everything, without giving exact details how.

So companies like ours have to figure out what any of this means. Our distributors are demanding we sign a letter that all our products meet prop 65 standards, and some of them won’t but anything that requires a sticker.

That combined with the new 25% tariffs, make business even more difficult, but at least it is difficult for everyone in industries effected.

So we will just switch manufacturing to Vietnam.

Companies like Mattel that own their factories in China, are pooched.
Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: uwe on August 21, 2018, 11:44:31 AM
There is a cure on this nickel-chrome menace, and it is called BLACK HARDWARE. But I am sure those commissars from cali will find something "not right" about that too...

I was about to say ... Haven't I been selflessly preaching the benefits of black hardware

(https://cdnmedia.mariejo.com/sites/marie-jo/files/public/styles/col-4/public/images/families/marie_jo-precious-0216-black_3462033.jpg?itok=iwplFOac)

through the years decades? One more reason for it, it's healthier and good for the environment!!!

(https://media.giphy.com/media/1o1iavc8gibxhMHaJ5/giphy.gif)
Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: TBird1958 on August 22, 2018, 10:14:28 AM


 I can honestly say I've never had anything containing nickel or chrome plated in my anus  :o









Maybe I'm not trying hard enough  :-* 
Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: Pilgrim on August 22, 2018, 11:10:59 AM

 I can honestly say I've never had anything containing nickel or chrome plated in my anus  :o

Maybe I'm not trying hard enough  :-*

Just stay low voltage at all times!
Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: amptech on August 22, 2018, 10:49:50 PM

 I can honestly say I've never had anything containing nickel or chrome plated in my anus  :o
Maybe I'm not trying hard enough  :-*

Not even a mini humbucker? How about black hardware? :mrgreen:









Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: uwe on August 23, 2018, 08:30:26 AM
Will coins be outlawed?  :o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAGeVtLOsYo 
Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: Dave W on August 23, 2018, 10:29:05 PM
Melanie will have to wear a Prop 65 warning.
Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: uwe on August 27, 2018, 09:19:06 AM
She never had anything posted to her refrigerator, you're being unfair.

If I may confess, Melanie was among the first then "modern" pop music I heard around the time I was 12 (and before I moved on to rock). I had liked the Beatles as a younger child, but my interest in music waned between, say, 8 and 12. My parents for some reason (probably because of "What Have They Done To My Song, Ma?" which was a big hit in Germany) had a Melanie pre-recorded tape and I started listening to that on rotation. It also helped my English at the time, because I found the lyrics very audible on her recordings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ52lk9wjZI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIFknAdVvNM

Even back then I had a hunch (untarnished by true knowledge, much less actual experience!) that "the pair of roller-skates" and "the brand new key" were metaphorical!

Title: Re: California Prop 65 warning
Post by: Dave W on August 27, 2018, 05:33:44 PM
Nothing wrong with Melanie. She's always done things her way, or at least it seems she has.