California has enacted what is known as the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, also referred to as Proposition 65 (Prop 65). Prop 65 requires the State of California to publish and maintain a list of substances identified by the State of California as being potentially harmful. The list has continually expanded since the passage of Prop 65, and it currently contains over 900 substances. The most recent list and other Prop 65 information are available on California’s web site: http://www.oehha.ca.gov/prop65.html.
Prop 65 requires products sold in California to come with warnings about potential exposure to any of the substances listed by the State of California. A Prop 65 warning is required with any product that exposes an individual in California to a substance listed by the State of California. It is important to note Prop 65 does not ban any products; it simply requires warnings.
Practically all foods contain certain levels of one or more of the substances covered by Prop 65.. In many cases, the exposure levels established by Prop 65 are much less than what occur naturally in fruits, vegetables, grains, and even drinking water, because plants absorb metals and other trace chemicals from the soil in which they are grown. The Prop 65 exposure standards are so strict that certain natural foods such as yams, turnips, apples, tomatoes, artichokes, carrots, cucumbers, green beans, lettuce, spinach, potatoes, and corn provide exposures in excess of Prop 65 limits. For example, natural carrots contain approximately 12.80 micrograms of arsenic in a one cup serving, which is an exposure that exceeds Prop 65 levels; and one cup of green beans contains 28.75 micrograms of lead, which is approximately 50 times the exposure allowed by Prop 65.
Prop 65 sets a safe harbor limit of 0.5 mcg of lead per serving, but this limit is far below the amount of lead naturally found in many fruits and vegetables grown on clean, non-contaminated soils. In 2009, the State of California conducted its own food crop soil-lead-uptake analysis (Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 129:212-220), and California’s experts found that the most commonly consumed vegetables (from 70 different locations) averaged nearly four times the Prop 65 lead limit per serving. When compared with the Prop 65 standards, each serving of potatoes, lettuce, wheat, carrots and many other vegetables would require a lead warning. Although fruit, grain, and vegetable producers generally are not prosecuted for failure to provide Proposition 65 warnings, even in these circumstances, nutritional supplement manufacturers are.
Unicity’s research indicates that any presence of chemicals covered by Prop 65 in our products occur as a result of the natural state of their ingredients. Prop 65 states that no warning is required when the listed substance occurs naturally in a food product, and not as the result of “known human activity.” However, the State of California has never issued clear guidelines on how this exception applies to the health supplement industry. It is generally understood that lead and other substances occur naturally in the environment and are found in trace amounts in naturally occurring ingredients, including those ingredients used to make dietary supplements. However, to claim this naturally occurring exception to Prop 65 (i.e., to not provide the warning) usually lands the claimant in an expensive, time consuming, and business destroying legal proceeding. If you were to re-sell these products, assuming you may do so within the requirements of a distribution agreement with Unicity, Proposition 65 would apply to such sales to California consumers.
Remember that Prop 65 regulates exposures, not concentrations. Natural proteins, for example, have high levels of lead naturally. Any process to remove the lead would destroy the protein. All Unicity products fall within FDA suggested guidelines for any/all of the chemicals listed by Prop 65 and can be safely consumed when used as directed.
If you would like to learn more about Prop 65, here are some additional links.
For a video about how some experts think Prop 65 has become a parody of itself, watch this:
http://acsh.org/2013/09/prop-65-in-real-life-why-this-wallet-wont-kill-you/
For an article about Prop 65 including the financial incentives involved in enforcement, read this:
http://acsh.org/2014/09/re-heated-coffee-scare-brought-prop-65-activists/
