US AAFA opposes proposed changes to California Proposition 65 warnings

AAFA senior vice president Nate Herman recently testified at a hearing on Proposition 65 at the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA).

Though the proposal claims the prosposed warning would better inform consumers than the current short form warning, the opposite is true, and the proposed warning does not offer consumers any meaningful information to make an educated choice in purchasing products, Herman said in his testimony.

With more than 900 chemicals on the Proposition 65 list, listing only one or two specific chemical names on a warning label represents an arbitrary selection of chemicals to which a consumer could be exposed in using that product, he noted.

If a consumer wants to avoid all Proposition 65-listed chemicals, then the current short-form warning most efficiently supports that goal, he said.

The express purpose of the law is, in fact, to educate consumers so that they can avoid exposure to all chemicals OEHHA has deemed harmful, if they so choose, he said.

Instead, adding more information to the warning label—in this case one or two chemical names—would mislead the consumer by implying that the chemical(s) on the warning label are the only chemicals to which a consumer could be exposed, which is not true, Herman said.

The proposed warning would make the consumer feel as if he has complete information about the risk of the product, when, in reality, it gives no context about the actual risk, he said.

“The proposed warning would only serve to mislead and confuse the consumer,” he said.

As the purpose of Proposition 65 is to protect consumers by giving them the information they need to make informed purchasing decisions, the proposal would not further that goal, and would instead, lessen that protection by misleading consumers and giving them a false sense of security, he added.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)