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State of California cancer warning on consumer products

H

hajime

macrumors G3
Original poster
Jul 23, 2007
8,173
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Hi, I bought a food dehydrator. In the manual, it states:
  • WARNING: This product contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause Cancer
However it does not say under what situation and the risk level. I have not used it yet. Is it better to stay away from it? Have not even turned it on yet.
 
I'm pretty sure that all items, regardless of the substances used for the manufacture, contain chemicals that are required to have a warning label if it is possible to be offered for sale in the State of California, regardless of the relative risk.
Your only hope is to discover products that were perhaps manufactured before Calif. required a printed warning.

I would call it an over-zealous mis-application of statutory regulation. (I suspect that Calif. does not require any notice of risk level, as the risk level is apparently of no concern when you have a cancer-causing substance. :rolleyes: All are the same...)
The warning is required by State of Calif. You may choose to ignore it, if you wish.
 
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A great example of allegedly well intentioned bureaucratic legislation—there are severe penalties for NOT warning consumers of possible carcinogen exposure. In California businesses are required to have notices prominently displayed if there are ANY chemical present or used in that building that may be linked to cancer, but they are not required to list any of those chemicals, nor are the businesses required to direct consumers to a department that may have that list.

Extremely useless legislation—it did help the businesses that printed the placards or labels or signs for the buildings.

At least it is less fiscally damaging than the high cost, er, high speed rail.
 
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especially imported food dehydrators, think of how you are going to use the deivce
at least you have a choice
 
There are a lot of things that CAN cause cancer, but sustained high doses(far more so than, say, would leach out of the plastic in 100 years of constant use) are needed to even increase your risk for cancer.

There are other things that may be found in the future to cause cancer.

Often, a potential carcinogen is used somewhere in the manufacturing process, and despite every attempt to get rid of it, there MAY be an insignificant amount remaining. Perhaps, too, a finisher of final products doesn't know if this is the case for the raw materials somewhere up the supply chain.

Slapping a Pro. 65 warning on everything is a lot less expensive than NOT declaring something that there's even the most remote possibility of finding a potential carcinogen in it.

Aside from that, there's always the potential in electrical food handling appliances that the food side is completely fine, but the electrical/electronics may contain heavy metals or other things from the naughty list. Even if food will never, ever, ever come into contact with the electronics in any use that doesn't also completely destroy the function, the fact that they're contained in the appliance is enough.
 
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The thing is that if I use that machine, each time it will run for 3-4 hours. Nobody knows what will happen during the dehydrating process. I am trying to decide if I should just return it. Have not even turned it on yet.
 
glenthompson said:
Research Proposition 65 in California. Easier and cheaper for any company to put the warning on any product than to fight any lawsuits. The warning has essentially become meaningless.
Click to expand...
Yarp. When the Missus ask me if I'm worried about the California warning label, I just quip, "We're not in California." If there were a Texas warning label that states it could affect my ability to boast and tell tall tales that gets taller with each telling🤭, then I'd worry.😨
 
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hajime said:
The thing is that if I use that machine, each time it will run for 3-4 hours. Nobody knows what will happen during the dehydrating process. I am trying to decide if I should just return it. Have not even turned it on yet.
Click to expand...
(?) If the dehydrator works as expected (and as advertised), then I think I can predict the dehydrating process will achieve your desired result - a dehydrated food item.
You might choose to ignore the Prop 65 "warning", or look for another similar product that does NOT have a Prop 65 warning. (Good luck finding something without any Prop 65 notice :cool: )
 
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My first approach is usually: "Ask the manufacturer."

Maybe you can look on the manufacturer's website for details about what's in the product that led them to add the warning. Or try the manufacturer's customer support forums or email.
 
I would go ahead and use it. If you just used the sun to dehydrate things you would still expose yourself to UV and cosmic rays which can also cause cancer.

I doubt if you can find any product that doesn't (or should not have) a Prop 65 label. The very computer or smartphone that you are using have been linked to cancer.

If an item posed a significant risk of causing harm (aside from those products that can cause damage like matches, lighters, baseball bats, metal posts) or cancer I doubt that the consumer protection groups would allow those items to remain on the market.

Happy dehydrating!
 
DeltaMac said:
I would call it an over-zealous mis-application of statutory regulation. (I suspect that Calif. does not require any notice of risk level, as the risk level is apparently of no concern when you have a cancer-causing substance. :rolleyes: All are the same...)
Click to expand...

Not to mention that the warnings become so ubiquitous as to be totally ignored. Kind of like speed limit signs around here...

It's like the rule was written by attorneys that do class-action lawsuits.
I just got in a bunch of woodworking hardware and tools. Every item had Prop 65 on it too.
 
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DeltaMac said:
(?) If the dehydrator works as expected (and as advertised), then I think I can predict the dehydrating process will achieve your desired result - a dehydrated food item.
You might choose to ignore the Prop 65 "warning", or look for another similar product that does NOT have a Prop 65 warning. (Good luck finding something without any Prop 65 notice :cool: )
Click to expand...

I mean nobody knows what would happen to those cancer inducing components during the dehydrating process. Would the process cause the components to release more cancer inducing fumes that could potentially be harmful?
 
chown33 said:
My first approach is usually: "Ask the manufacturer."

Maybe you can look on the manufacturer's website for details about what's in the product that led them to add the warning. Or try the manufacturer's customer support forums or email.
Click to expand...

Yes, I emailed them but no reply. This raised the alarm and caused more concern.
 
Chances are you’ll never hear from them. Who knows exactly what chemicals that they used during the production of the dehydrator.

Again, if it was a significant problem it would not be sold. If you were to eliminate all the items in your life have a prop 65 warning you’d have a pretty spartan life without walls, electronics, vehicles, electricity, heat or ac, clothing, most foods, beer, wine, liquor, sunshine....
 
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Pretty much all the real "nasties" in consumer products went away a long time ago, with the exception of stuff that's specifically sold as that.

As an example, lead is a recognized carcinogen and also can be toxic in and of itself. One of the biggest places you'd find it in consumer products was in solder on the circuit boards. Lead free solder has been the norm(and legally required in some places) for quite a few years now-in fact sometimes in detriment to the longevity of the product(I don't do a lot of board-level work, but if I do you'd better believe I'm using lead solder). Carcinogens have been eliminated as much as possible at the manufacturing level, but you can't avoid the fact that things like some plastic pre-cursors are nasty. As an example, ALL PVC("vinyl") plastics are, by definition, made by the polymerization of the compound vinyl chloride. Vinyl Chloride is something really, really nasty and is a known and recognized Class 1(known to cause cancer) carcinogen. It's HIGHLY unlikely that there is still any remaining by the time it reaches you as a finished PVC product, but it's likely going to have a Prop 65 warning on it. ABS plastic is made from styrene, a Class 1 carcinogen(known to cause cancer) and acrylonitrile(Class 2B, may cause cancer). Again, it's highly unlikely that any is still present in the finished product, but you still slap a Prop. 65 warning on it.

Prop 65 is written in such a way that if an article contains a substance, after regular lifetime exposure at the level in the product, may cause a 1 in 100,000 risk of cancer, it must carry a Prop. 65 warning. There are currently 910 chemicals listed on the Prop. 65 "naughty list". The list is also updated every year.

Because that's such a low threshold to meet, and there's enough common stuff that may have touched a product somewhere along the way, it's a whole, whole lot cheaper and easier to stick a Prop. 65 warning than face the risk of an expensive lawsuit down the line. That's especially true given that a product may be in production for a couple of years and you have no idea what might get added to the list in coming years even if it's not currently listed.
 
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