California Prop 65 warning

[Barklessdog]

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

[clankenstein]

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.

[Dave W]

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?

[Denis]

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.

[Dave W]

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.

[Pilgrim]

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.

[patman]

I recently purchased a dining set that has one of these warnings underneath every piece...guess the finishing materials are potentially cancer causing

[Highlander]

... 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... 

[exiledarchangel]

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?

[clankenstein]

Dihydrogen Monoxide - scary stuff, i found some in my water bottle once.

[Barklessdog]

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?

[Dave W]

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.

[Chris P.]

Dihydrogen Monoxide - scary stuff, i found some in my water bottle once.

[lowend1]

California, home of the hot rod and custom car culture, throwing shade at chrome plating.

[exiledarchangel]

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...