https://oag.ca.gov/environment/prop65
You probably have seen it everywhere if you live or travel in California.
“This product can expose you to chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.”
The original idea seems perfectly reasonable: warn people about dangerous exposures.
But there is a problem. For a manufacturer, determining that the warning is not necessary may require exposure analysis and accepting some legal risk. Putting the warning on the product is much easier.
So the rational manufacturer may warn first and ask questions never.
Eventually the warning appears everywhere. Consumers stop asking what chemical is involved, how much of it is present, what the actual exposure is, or whether the risk is meaningful. The warning becomes visual noise.
This creates an interesting member of a much larger family of problems: a regulation created with good intentions changes the incentives of the people implementing it, and their rational response can partially destroy the value the regulation was supposed to create.
The paradox is beautiful: requiring more information can leave the consumer with less useful information.
There is also an important counterargument worth mentioning.
Prop 65 has sometimes caused manufacturers to actually reduce hazardous chemicals rather than merely label them. The California Attorney General gives examples involving lead in artificial turf and lead-containing coatings on beverage bottles.
What should we do?
Perhaps the reasonable next step is much simpler: relax.
Keep strong warnings where the expected exposure and risk are substantial enough that an ordinary person might reasonably change behavior because of them. If something I regularly eat, breathe, or handle creates a meaningful risk, tell me clearly.
But for the enormous tail of products where the risk is extremely small, indirect, or requires unrealistic levels of exposure, perhaps the correct warning is no warning at all.
This would have to come together with legal protection. We cannot tell manufacturers, “Don’t put ridiculous warnings everywhere,” while simultaneously leaving them exposed to lawsuits for failing to warn about extremely small risks. The regulatory threshold and liability threshold have to move together.
At some point we should be allowed to say: yes, there is some risk. It is small enough. Live with it.