Proposed changes to California Proposition 65 short form warnings (Jan 3 2024)
On October 27, 2023 the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard
Assessment (OEHHA), the state agency that implements Proposition 65,
introduced its third attempt to amend the “short form” warning
provisions. This has been going on for a few years now but every time
they get ready to amend the regulations they stop short and put it off
for various "reasons". The fourth attempt may be the charm. Comments are
due on the new regulations by January 3 2024. The proposed regulations (and rationale for changes) are here and the comment form is here. However
I am gathering commitments from companies for our office to write a
collective letter on all their behalves (so that they remain anonymous
to the agency). Please email me if you wish to join in out letter. The
main problem with the proposed amendments is that OEHHA does not like
the fact that manufacturers and distributors are defaulting to the use
of the short form warning in order to escape the dragnet of plaintiff's
lawsuits that are impossible to cost effectively defeat. OEHHA wants to
force companies to have to run very costly tests on
hundreds of potential chemicals (many not testable) so that they can
list the chemical(s) in the warning text before they can use the safe
harbor short form warning. Think of it as sort of a "penalty" for using the short form. All the arguments they make for this change
are fallacious arguments. They don't like all the short form warnings
being used as they feel its diluting the overall effect of Prop 65. That is not the
industry's problem that's the regulators problem. Their rationales are
comical if it were not so sad and costly for companies to deal with. They are also
proposing some additional "catch all" warnings for motorsports parts
that are just not workable/feasible or cost effective and are NOT going
to make consumers safer at all. This is what we would expect from
bureaucrats who have never worked in the recreational sports business or
any product manufacturing business for that matter.
