Bait and Switch
Always on the lookout for the perfect water bottle, at the grocery store I see this nifty little aluminum number from afar:
Thinking it is worth a second look I go in for a closer inspection:
Okay. Nice little sticker ya’ got there bottle! Then I happen to glance at the bottom:
Uhhh. Okay so why put the “colored decorations” on to begin with? I need colored decorations a lot less than I need a baby with a birth defect, so I passed on the water bottle.
Suspicious that this might just be some hippy-dippy overprotection I looked up Prop 65 when I got home. If you are curious you can read the whole story here on the CA Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment’s website, but basically in the 80’s prop 65 was passed which requires businesses to post a hazard label on items that have specific chemicals in them that are know to cause birth defects. The three top offenders are BROMOCHLOROACETIC ACID (the garbagy byproduct of water purification), CUMENE (a flammable component of crude oil) AND DICLOFOP-METHYL (the main component of most weed killers) but a more comprehensive list of every chemical Prop 65 includes can be downloaded here.
No telling which one is in the blue paint on the bottle. My money is on Cumene, but who knows? Who cares is more like it. They all sound awful. The more I thought about the Prop 65 warning lable the more I saw it everywhere.
This was in the parking garage at the Century City Mall in Los Angeles:
I have no idea what “Title 22, Division 2 means”. I asked Mr. Google and he gave me a bunch of 100+ page PDF documents that looked like xeroxes of faxes typed on a dot matrix printer. But I am tired and might give it another go if I really care that much about it tomorrow.
Now that I am already on my soap box I think I’ll take the opportunity to gripe about one more thing before shuffling off to bed. Reading all of these warnings (and there were about a dozen more that I didn’t add photos of but might save for a slow news day in the future) I appreciate the California bureaucracy just a smidge despite the bad wrap it is getting lately. Yes we may be bankrupt but at least they have the decency to spring for stickers on things that are going to kill me or my kid. I guess they are just really overpriced? Seriously though, my complaint is that I’d like to think I am at least of average intelligence and I know I have a lot of time on my hands (Exitbit A: this blog) and yet I am having a hard time finding the heart of what these warnings mean despite being smarter than the average bear, with more time than the average sloth and more interest than the average curious cat. Wow, I AM really tired.
3 Comments
LaurenInteresting. I tend to think Prop 65 is totally bogus, but reading the specifics about those chemicals (and birth defects) is thought-provoking. Since noticing a Prop 65 sticker about two years ago (oddly, on a coffee mug I bought at Common Grounds (in TX)), I see it everywhere! It’s all over products. I’m curious though, why is California the (one?) state that has such a warning? Like, when I got that mug in Texas. Since the warning said “known to… California” does it mean that as long as I use the mug outside of California I’ll be okay? Obviously that’s not what they’re getting at, but if the chemicals really are so harmful, why don’t other states mention it?
dang nice story dude.
nice article! I heard something on the radio the other day about new legislation on lead content in, well… everything. We shall discuss soon. it was very interesting.