Postcard from California: Chemical warning labels are everywhere – and they’re working

A driver entering an enclosed parking garage in California is greeted by a 20-by-20-inch sign declaring in 72-point type: WARNING: Breathing the air in this parking garage can expose you to chemicals including carbon monoxide and gasoline or diesel engine exhaust, which are known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. 

The signs are known as Prop. 65 warnings, after the ballot proposition number of the state Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, which in 1986 was approved by almost two-thirds of California voters.

The law established a registry that is regularly updated with substances that include hazardous chemicals found in common household products, electronics, pesticides, food, drugs, dyes, additives, construction materials and automobiles. All must carry warning labels if they contain threshold levels of a listed chemical. The law also prohibits the discharge of listed chemicals into sources of drinking water.

In the most recent update, the Prop. 65 registry, which is maintained by scientists at the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), has grown to 874 chemicals and compounds. Chemicals are added only after exhaustive reviews by independent expert panels of studies from authoritative national and international public health agencies.

Critics say Prop. 65 requires warnings on so many seemingly benign products, such as aspirin, and in so many supposedly safe places, such as Disneyland, that most consumers barely notice or scoff at them.

Social media posts joke about “the weirdest place you have seen a cancer warning in California.” One popular response: “This comment is known by the state of California to cause cancer.”

A national law firm representing direct marketers, who must add Prop. 65 warnings to their catalogs and websites, lamented: “Judging by the labels, virtually everything is unsafe, and when everything is unsafe, consumers stop caring.”

A 2016 Harvard Kennedy School faculty research paper called Prop. 65 an ineffectual “wolf or puppy” warning: “It fails miserably at distinguishing between large and small risks; that is to say between wolves and puppies.”

But recent research finds that Prop. 65 is working to lower consumers’ exposure to toxic chemicals, with impacts not just in California but nationwide and globally as many manufacturers move to eliminate listed chemicals from their products.

Last month, researchers at the nonprofit Silent Spring Institute and the University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health published results of interviews with business leaders at 32 major global manufacturers and retailers.

More than three-fourths of interviewees said Prop. 65 has prompted them to reformulate their products, and more than 60% said that included products sold outside of California. More than 80% said they look to Prop. 65 to see which chemicals to avoid in new products or raw materials. 

“What we found was that companies, rather than consumers, may be most affected by the law’s warning requirements,” Silent Spring research scientist Jennifer Ohayon, a lead author of the study, said in a statement. “By increasing businesses’ awareness of chemicals in the supply chain, Prop 65 has caused them to shift away from using toxic substances, and that’s a positive step for public health.”

The reason is simple: “Companies are incredibly reluctant to put a label on a product that says it contains a chemical that causes cancer,” said Ohayon.

The law applies to products sold in California, even if they are made elsewhere. Companies don’t want to make a Prop. 65-compliant product to be sold in California, the nation’s largest market, and another version for other places, so California’s regulations often create a de facto national standard.

In October, another study by researchers from the same institutions showed that Prop. 65 is also working to lower concentrations of toxic chemicals in Americans’ bodies.

Using biomonitoring data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), they analyzed human blood and urine samples for levels of 26 chemicals before and after they were listed. For most of the chemicals, levels in people’s bodies went down, both in California and nationwide, in the years following their listing.

The study also found that, on average, Californians have lower levels of toxic chemicals than other Americans.

“Our finding that Californians are generally less exposed to toxic chemicals than are other Americans has potentially far-reaching implications,” study co-author Claudia Polsky, director of the Environmental Law Clinic at the UC Berkeley School of Law, said in a statement. “It suggests a tangible public health payoff from the state’s more stringent environmental regulation.”

The most controversial aspect of Prop. 65 is that it allows enforcement by private citizens. If a product contains a listed chemical but fails to carry a warning label, any person or organization can bring a lawsuit against the manufacturer or retailer to force compliance and collect damages.

Critics, often aligned with the chemical industry or manufacturers, say this encourages “bounty hunters” to file frivolous actions. But Prop. 65 lawsuits have led to significant wins for public health, including the reduction of lead in toothpaste, arsenic in bottled water, and the removal of toluene, a reproductive toxin, from nail polish.

Cynics who say the warning labels are so ubiquitous as to be meaningless are missing the point. A Prop. 65 label doesn’t mean a product is going to make an individual person sick. But by raising public awareness of hazardous chemicals and encouraging manufacturers to use safer chemicals, the broader population benefits.

“One thing consumers should know is that Prop. 65 is a little bit like an iceberg,” former OEHHA deputy director Alan Hirsch told the online news site SFGATE. “They see the warnings, and the warnings are maybe about 10% of the law. What they don’t see is the other 90%. The warnings really do provide businesses with an incentive to reformulate their products and take listed chemicals out of them.”

• Bill Walker has more than 40 years of experience as a journalist and environmental advocate. He lives in California’s San Joaquin Valley. 

(Opinion columns published in The New Lede represent the views of the individual(s) authoring the columns and not necessarily the perspectives of TNL editors.)