The Proposed Expansion Of Wetsuit Chemical Regulation Under Proposition 65 Would Effectively Ban The Neoprene Formulation Every Working California Wetsuit Uses
The Underlying Chemical Risk Is Real But Has Been Addressed Through Voluntary Industry Standards, And The Proposed Regulation Would Impose Substantial Costs With Minimal Marginal Safety Benefit
For Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
SACRAMENTO – A proposed expansion of California’s Proposition 65 chemical disclosure regime, announced in administrative draft form by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment in February, would add specific chloroprene compounds used in the manufacture of virtually every commercially available neoprene wetsuit to the Proposition 65 disclosure list, with a warning-label threshold that would, in practical terms, require warning labels on every working wetsuit sold in California. The consumer impact and industry response suggest the proposal has not been examined carefully against its underlying risk assessment.
The Underlying Risk
The underlying chemical risk is real but has been addressed through voluntary industry standards. Chloroprene, the primary monomer in the neoprene polymerisation process, is a known occupational hazard at production facilities and has been studied extensively in manufacturing contexts, with established occupational exposure limits. The wetsuit, as a finished consumer product, contains residual chloroprene at levels well below any threshold established as a consumer health concern. The voluntary industry standards for finished wetsuit residual monomer content are tighter than any current regulatory standard.
The Proposed Regulation
The proposed regulation would require a Prop 65 warning label on finished wetsuits sold in California. The warning label is, as operated under California practice, a substantial commercial disincentive; retailers routinely refuse to stock Prop 65-labeled products across multiple categories, and the labeling requirement has, in other categories, produced product withdrawals rather than reformulations. Reason has covered the pattern extensively.
The Cost-Benefit Assessment
The cost-benefit assessment, on available evidence, does not support the proposal. The marginal consumer-exposure reduction from a Prop 65 label is negligible; Prop 65 operates on disclosure rather than on substantive product standards, and consumers who currently use wetsuits without complaint are unlikely to change behaviour on the basis of a warning label. The industry compliance costs, by contrast, are substantial: either reformulation to a non-chloroprene polymer (which the current industry has determined produces an inferior product at higher cost), or market withdrawal from California (which reduces consumer choice).
The Libertarian Position
The libertarian position on Prop 65 generally, and on this expansion specifically, is that disclosure regulation is not cost-free, that cost-benefit scrutiny should apply to disclosure regulations with the same rigour as to substantive standards, and that the proliferation of Prop 65 warnings has, over time, degraded the informational value of each individual warning to the point of near-zero. Cato has written on this specific phenomenon, which the regulatory economics literature calls “warning fatigue”.
What Should Follow
The proposal should be withdrawn, or, failing that, narrowed to apply only to products with measurable consumer-exposure levels above established health concern thresholds.
Further: FEE. SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
