What is the reason behind California cancer warning labels? Literally everything seems to be causing cancer. I just bought a few s2s maple boards from a local lumber supplier and each one had a sticker saying it’s known to the State of California to cause cancer. A maple board? There’s no treatment or paint on it. It’s just a milled and poorly planed piece of lumber.
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California has methods of bypassing the normal legislative process via citizen’s initiatives–essentially, get enough signatures on petitions and your proposition makes it to a general state ballot to be voted on in the next general election.
So a group felt that the politicians at the time were not doing enough to protect and/or inform citizens of potential carcinogens they were being exposed to, and thus put forward Prop 65. Which passed overwhelmingly, and that’s not surprising–I know if I saw a ballot option that said “Companies need to label things that cause cancer” (and you didn’t have your current knowledge of how things turned out), I probably would have voted for it as well.
But, of course, that list of things that cause cancer is pretty broad and found in so many things that it largely becomes useless.
For your specific example, I don’t know exactly all of what might trigger the warning, not being treated probably doesn’t matter, maple resin/sap may well naturally have cancer-causing compounds. However, looking through the list, I note that “Wood Dust” itself is listed as a known carcinogen (I presume in a manner similar to asbestos), so that alone would probably trigger the label.
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