California Proposition 65 (1986)
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Proposition 65 is a California law that has been in effect since 1986 to promote clean drinking water and keep toxic substances that cause cancer and birth defects out of consumer products. It is administered by Cal/EPA's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA).
The law requires that anyone at reasonable risk of exposure be informed when substances classified as toxins are present. Since enactment, it has been the reason for the addition of notices of specific contents to consumer product labels. Along with the added label requirements, an official list of implicated substances is maintained and made publically available. Entries are added or removed based on current scientific information. All substances listed show their known or suspected risk factors, a unique CAS chemical classification number, the date they were listed, and if so, whether they have been delisted.
The legislation was controversial. Labeling requirements conceded the reality that listing and classifying substances did not help the consumer if the contents of a purchase were unknown. At the same time, there were no other labeling requirements to support the proposition. Industry critics and corporate defense lawyers charge that Proposition 65 is "a clever and irritating mechanism used by litigious NGOs and others to publicly spank politically incorrect opponents ranging from the American gun industry to seafood retailers, etc." [1]