California Proposition 65 is a unique regulation that brings separate compliance requirements from all other regulations in the US (or abroad) and is enforced through civil litigation (via issuance of a Notice of Violation, or “NOV”). At the beginning of each month we take a quick look at an enforcement summary for the previous month to highlight the types of products being targeted, how frequently, and any new trends in enforcement action that may appear.
Hopefully these posts will raise a flag for any company selling these types of products into California so they can take a careful look at their products and get ahead of any potential enforcement actions, which can be very costly!
Here is our summary for November:
– Much of the same from previous months with phthalates, heavy metals, and acrylamide dominating the compliance issues.
– Any beverage with more than 0.5% alcohol is considered an alcoholic beverage and a kefir product was targeted because it exceeded that amount of alcohol – kombucha (another fermented beverage) has been targeted in the past as well. Oops!
– Leather gloves continue to be targeted, as were highly dangerous bed sheets containing formaldehyde.
Bounty hunter lawyers are always hunting and clearly making easy money from companies caught unprepared…..will your company wait until targeted (potentially costing you tens of thousands of dollars)? Ask me how to protect your business!
