LABEL WARNINGS FOR CALIFORNIA PROPOSITION 65

You may have noticed that there are warning labels on some GEISHA products that refer to California’s Proposition 65.

Proposition 65 requires any company selling products to notify California consumers of the presence of chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm if those products expose consumers to such chemicals—even if those chemicals are present in only tiny amounts. Many chemicals included on the State of California’s list, such as lead, cadmium and arsenic, are naturally found in the environment.

A Proposition 65 warning notice does not mean that the product is dangerous or harmful. The State of California requires Proposition 65 warnings at concentrations far below those generally considered safe by other regulatory agencies, such as the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the European Union (EU). For example, a single liter of bottled drinking water is considered safe by the FDA if it has five or less parts per billion of lead. That is ten times the threshold amounts for providing a warning under Proposition 65. According to California’s own Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment: “A Proposition 65 warning does not necessarily mean that a product is in violation of any product-safety standards or requirements.”

For chemicals that are listed as causing cancer, Proposition 65 requires a warning if the amount of the chemical would cause one additional case of cancer in 100,000 people who are exposed to that specific chemical every day for 70 years. Proposition 65 also requires a warning if there are traces of a chemical known to cause birth defects where the amount is only 1/1000th of the amount of that is known to cause harm.

While we understand that people in California have a right to know about the presence of certain chemicals, consumers should also understand that we would never sell any products that are unsafe.