California Fiddles With Prop 65 Short-Form Warnings

Whether Nero actually fiddled while Rome burned is historically questionable, though it was undoubtedly true that the mad emperor focused on the trivial during a time of emergency. California leaves no such room for historians to quibble as the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) takes a third stab in recent years at tinkering with the "short form" warning provisions of Prop 65, justifying the effort in part by asserting that "[n]ot requiring a specific chemical to be included in the short-form warning has led to its over-use, and many businesses are using the short-form warning prophylactically because it protects from potential litigation." Meanwhile, the true cause of "over-warning" is continually ignored by OEHHA: the ridiculous ease of bringing a Prop 65 notice of violation and forcing companies into expensive litigation, even when, in many cases, no such warning was required. (A topic about which we have a lot more to say, most recently with