[mathraki]

A lot of commonplace stuff can cause harm above a certain dosage. Which is partially why Prop 65 is failing.

99% of things in Prop 65 are fine in moderation. And the 1% that isn't (I would love to be warned of that myself) - well, it's lost among everything else.

[repsilat]

Right. Obviously if they put the sign on nothing, no information would be communicated. And the same if they put it on "50% of things" (defined however you like) because everyone knows the median thing isn't a real cancer risk. Maybe it could communicate the breaking of some threshold, but not a meaningful one.

To be truly informative, binary cancer warnings should be rare -- they should appear near a threshold where reasonable people are likely to be swayed by them (but not certain to be swayed by them -- at that point we're probably labeling too few things.)

But enough about binary labels, though. They should have to put figures on them: "Scientists believe that the cancer risk of this cup of coffee is statistically expected to decrease your lifespan by 5 minutes, plus or minus a day, with 95% confidence."

[war1025]

I think my favorite Prop 65 item is my broom, which apparently is cancer causing.

Really no idea what would be in it that is worth being worried about.

[perl4ever]

I got a rake like that. There were no non-cancer rakes for sale.

I could only think maybe there is something used to assemble it with lead in it?