California’s Warning Label Overload

In the California Political Review, CAS’s Chief Science Officer, Dr. Joe Perrone, explains how California’s Proposition 65 law misleads consumers by creating a “warning label overload.”

California’s Proposition 65—the subject of Dr. Perrone’s latest research paper—mandates warning labels on products that contain chemicals which regulators found might cause “one excess case of cancer in 100,000 individuals over a 70 year period.” But as Dr. Perrone explains, aimlessly throwing warning labels on products that have essentially zero statistical health risk, consumers have “no context for what level of exposure poses an actual risk and when a chemical might actually have health benefits.”

Dr. Perrone’s article calls for reforming Proposition 65 by adopting a standardized process for determining the actual risk of chemicals to consumers. You can read the full piece on the California Political Review’s website here.