I ordered this Strap from this retailer a few days ago : I got it today, but when reading the sticker it had on, I read this : (a small triangle with a bar inside followed by) "Warning : Cancer and Reproductive Harm -
www.P65Warnings.ca.gov
I wonder is this really serious and dangerous (I plan to send it back coz there isn't any hole that's large enough for the jack plug at the back of the acoustic-electric guitars anyway - although the photographs tend to show a difference between holes at the front and the hole at the back) ?
Prop 65 is a well-intentioned (but horribly written) law. I won't get into some of the details, but essentially it boils down to:
<RANT>
- The state of California has a list of chemicals that their scientsts believe cause either cancer or reproductive harm
- Anything sold in the state of California that can expose a customer to a specified level of those chemicals "in normal use" needs to be labeled as containing a reproductive or cancer causing hazard. You don't need to list them all, just one in each category.
- Enforcement is 'citizen initiated.' Meaning, if you discover a product with an undeclared hazard, you bring the suit, and share in the fine.
The problems are huge. Specifically
- Even if you don't actively sell product in the state of California, if it gets somehow grey-marketed there, you're still on the hook.
- While most manufacturers may know what chemicals are in their products, they may not (without ludicrously expensive testing) how many PPM or PPB somebody might be exposed to by an undefined normal use. To use the guitar strap example, say it might include trace amounts of benzene from the tanning process. Now, how are you supposed to quantify how much benzene somebody might be exposed to if they use that strap. Are they playing it topless, or wearing a shirt? Do you want to go to court to litigate that chewing on the strap is not 'normal use,' even though mastication might exceed the threshold defined by the state of California?
- There is a small army of 'citizen enforcers' that go through retail stores with handheld FTIR scanners that look for 'hot' items on the list in retail establishments looking for Prop 65 targets to collect money on
There, of course, is not any incentive to not label, even if you don't have products that, in actual normal use, would expose somebody. So everybody in the United States labels their products, even if they don't sell in the state, just to 'CYA.'
But wait, it gets worse. The law applies to products, but not packaging. So, if you have a product that contains 'pthalates,' you need to label them as having having a reproductive hazard. And you laser-print a label for it. The laser toner contains carbon black, a cancer hazard, according to the law, but you don't have to put that on the label,
because it's part of the packaging, and not the product.
In a previous life, I worked for a company that sold equipment used for handling hazardous chemicals in laboratories designed to handle them. Seriously 'if you spill this on you, it could kill you' kind of chemicals. Products that were cutting edge on safety and reliability features to protect the users from exposure to these chemicals, which any OSHA regulation would have you wearing full PPE -gloves, goggles, etc.
But we still had to put Prop 65 labels on everything, even though virtually all customers were using far more dangerous materials, to warn them that they might get cancer if they happened to chew on the polypropylene product housing during lunch break. If you have a case, you might win it, but how much would it cost you?
And trust me, most people would consider me a tree-hugger. This is just a poorly written piece of legislation that numbs people to the actual hazards they have to deal with.
</RANT>
www.thomannmusic.com
), I can do all right.
) ...
.
(Europe) anyhow...
