I was looking at some dremel tools at lowes the other day, turned the package around and saw a warning that said "warning this product contains nickel which has been found to cause cancer in california".
I thought, man.. If california can't use nickels, send'm my way. I'll make them safe for humanity for free!
Californians are very sensitive to any potentially harmful substances. There are stickers on my wafer packages that say something like that:
This gallium arsenide product contains arsenic which has been found to cause cancer in california.
I better stop to eat these shiny cookies for breakfast... :-)
I like US products they are always good for a laugh... We have a chemical bucket in our lab, covered with warning stickers like toxic, corrosive, spontaneously combustible, etc... And in addition one illustrated sticker that says: keep children away from buckets half full with liquid, they might drown inside.
I just checked California's Proposition 65 list and sure enough metallic nickel and lot of its compounds are designated carcinogens. Out in the land of the fruits and the nuts you have groups like the Sierra Club sniffing products with gc's etc to detect these substances and if no warning is given they turn them in to the State for a bounty. Fines for violation of Prop 65 are draconian. It is not that you cannot use the product because as you facetiously say, the 5 cent piece would be banned as would tobacco, alcoholic beverages and gasoline. The critical thing is that there is a warning ;) Frank
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