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California Prop 65 and 41L40

Nerdlinger

Stainless
Joined
Aug 10, 2013
Location
Chicago, IL
Has anyone gone through the rigmarole to determine if a widget made with a component that is made from 41L40 ("leaded") requires their warning label, per the PROP 65 thingy? :skep: It looks like 41L40 has about .15-.35% lead. The chips are so nice, though! :mad5:
 
Every product that I have seen so far says "may contain ..... in the state of California".

Note the use of may rather than does.

Probably easier to just play it safe and apply the label.
 
California can't seem to get out of its own way so I wouldn't be surprised if it was necessary.
 
Tracking lead content has become and international thing. ROHS for instance


I know that 12L14 is* ROHS compliant. I don't know about 41L40, 86L20, or 11L44?

No clue what this "65" thing is.




* Or at least it was. Not sure if ROHS limits have been moving targets or not?


------------------

Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 
Last time I was in San Jose, I went with my host to pickup BBQ. The BBQ restaurant had a Proposition 65 sticker nailed to the wall, presumably because some pig had an elevated blood lead level, or they use stainless utensils containing chromium, or some other ridiculous thing. I almost lost it, laughing.

In their effort to inform the public about possible hazards, California has reduced the value of the formulaic warning to near zero. Prop65 warnings are on EVERYTHING, and therefore the sign carries no useful signal. A real, serious, imminently life-threatening hazard carries exactly the same statutory warning notice as an utterly negligible incidental risk.
 
Far as I know, the law is meant for items with food (utensils), water (valves and fitting), or skin contact (toys, wearable or hand held items).

I suspect your steel supplier could give an instant answer.
 
Far as I know, the law is meant for items with food (utensils), water (valves and fitting), or skin contact (toys, wearable or hand held items).

I suspect your steel supplier could give an instant answer.

That’s a good idea...I never thought about just asking the steel guy. Thanks!
 
Just to add a followup to this, coffee (yes, ordinary coffee that you drink) now requires a Proposition 65 warning label in the state of California.

And this is not just some lunatic judge or overbearing bureaucrat taking some decision solo. If you read the linked article, there is a group suing Starbucks and 90 other companies under the provisions of Prop 65, which allow civil plaintiffs to collect a proportion of any fines assessed on defendants. Gosh, I wonder what their motivations might be?

Fortunately, it's entirely possible that this latest lunacy will be overturned on appeal. But it's California, so maybe not.

I'm going to reprise my mini-rant from earlier. When you raise the same signal for all levels of threat, it becomes impossible to distinguish a life-threatening threat from a minor-inconvenience threat. Black pepper is recognized as having carcenogenic properties. Because it's an herbal seasoning (and preservative) of thousands of years documented use, the US FDA applies different rules to black pepper than to some more modern food additive. If black pepper were a new spice, the FDA would be forced to ban it under the applicable rules. Now, ask yourself: Is putting black pepper on my food a significant threat to my health? The answer is obviously NO. So the level of risk we all find perfectly acceptable is a far higher level of risk than is allowed by FDA rulings in the US. Clearly the same deal with coffee and California's Proposition 65.
 
It wouldn't surprise me if this is another case of lawyers, fronting themselves as a non-profit, enriching themselves. California, in an attempt to "do right", makes it all too easy for lawyers to scam the system.

I have a bit of a pet peeve here. The US often does what amounts to quality control ass backwards. Because we don't have good quality control in medical care - we're left with the most expensive kind of quality control -- paying for field errors -- as the de facto standard for the nation. Medical errors, especially in hospitals, kill about 30% of those who die. It might be even worse if not for the threat of legal action to eventually get rid of bad doctors -- but it would be a whole lot better and cheaper to fix the problems (sometimes as simple as washing hands or being sure it's the left leg you want to cut off) before people die.

Similarly, there is a sort of scam here of going around to public businesses, finding some problem for the disabled, and essentially doing a bit of lawyerly extortion. Cheaper and better to make this more of a routine building code, restaurant inspection, etc. thing. But we'd rather save that public expense and, instead, leave it to lawyers.

Same thing applies to a lot of industrial accidents, fires, chemical spills, etc. The fear of getting sued for being negligent after killing a bunch of people or ruining a water supply is somewhat of a deterrent -- but we really ought to be applying best practices in building, transporting, etc. from the beginning. Seems we'd rather gut things like OSHA and the EPA -- and then let lawyers remind us of the problems with million to billion dollar lawsuits.

You can add in safety. There's something wrong when GM knows a hundred of its customers will die from a bad ignition switch design -- and it takes a lawsuit to get that fixed. Ditto VW and emissions, Exxon and oil spills, BP and the Gulf, Flint and its water system, etc.

Apparently lawyers and financiers run in enough the same circles that we still haven't done more than slap a few wrists for the various frauds in the run up to the 2008 "Great Recession." The country is now doing pretty much nothing to avoid a repeat.

With respect to coffee, there's some evidence that it actually lessens the incidence of some cancers; as well as the evidence that the current roasting process might be a problem. Maybe sort of like decaf coffee when carcinogenic solvents were used to take out the caffeine. Shame that enriching slimy lawyers is our way of recognizing and dealing with problems like this.

Should add that I'm not anti-lawyer. Rule of law is a great thing -- a real competitive advantage for towns, states, and nations that do it right. Lawyers working to avoid future disputes, protect legitimate rights, and assure a just society are terrific. Glad we have them.

However, we've got about 10x the number of lawyers, per capita, than either Japan or Canada. Seriously, ten times as many. Those countries seem to be as honest and just as our own (yeah, no one is perfect). Unlike most jobs, lawyers don't have to sell their services -- they can concoct some marginal BS and force their "services" on to a "customer" via a lawsuit. As someone who has spent a lifetime in various aspects of new product development I've thought how come lawyers and not engineers can just walk up to a company and say "Your product kind of sucks, pay me $1,000,000 and I'll go away, maybe give you some tips on what to change."

If we did quality control right -- from toxic substances through equal rights to health care and finance -- we wouldn't need so many lawyers and wouldn't be hearing of this sort of excess.
 
It wouldn't surprise me if this is another case of lawyers, fronting themselves as a non-profit, enriching themselves. California, in an attempt to "do right", makes it all to easy for lawyers to scam the system.

I contacted the California "Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment" directly and told them exactly how my product is being used and asked if they felt it warrants the Prop 65 warning label. They told me to hire a firm that would do the analysis. :skep:
 
I built a waste treatment system at an existing plant outdoors. No roof because that would trigger ADA access requirements for the entire plant. 3 foot containment wall around the plant. Couldn’t put a ladder over it because thaf would cause a requirement for a wheelchair ramp. Short fat state inspector lady came out in a dress to inspect. Funny as hell watching us roll her 300 lb ass over that wall!
 
Why not Just substitute one of the non- leaded free cutting alloys now available?


Like what?

I am familiar with 100 and 200 alloys from Inland Steel to substitute bismuth for the lead in 12L14, but I don't know if ArcelorMittal offers anything like that anymore? There were some other recipes that folks have tried over the years, but I don't know any that ever cought on much to date?


Are there Bismuth or similar recipes for the alloy grades that I don't know of?


---------------------

Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 
Why not Just substitute ...


On who's authority?
With the exception of one of my customers, I can't substitute a fucking thing without written submission, reason, testing and prolonged approval!
For some of them I can't substitute "billet" for a casting, and then there are the ones where I can't even change coolant or lubricant unless explicitly approved!
 








 
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