Is it imported? I see an old Reddit thread with a similar issue where someone claims that warning was in everything imported from an area where there had been lead problems, whether there still are or not
this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2024
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Soybeans and many other vegetables will pull in trace amounts of lead from the soil. There is probably some amount of lead in most/all soy products (as well as many other products).
California’s lead threshold for prop-65 warning is 0.5 µg/day. From what I gather, this is a very very low threshold.
Private citizens in California can sue and collect damages against companies selling products that should have a prop 65 warning but don’t. This has created a bit of an industry of citizens who go out, buy random products, test them for prop 65 chemicals, and if they find a violation get themselves a reward. From what I remember reading, Asian markets/producers are a very popular target.
This leads to a lot of companies putting labels on their product just to cover their asses. With such a low threshold for labeling and the fact that soybeans can contain lead, it seems to me to be smart business to always put that label on soy products because you might get a batch of soybeans that put your product over the threshold and get yourself sued. My hunch is that there is just as likely to be lead in the prop-65 labeled tofu as the non-labeled stuff and the difference comes down the to producers risk tolerance (or awareness).
The California advisory doesn't mean the product contains lead. It means that somewhere along the production process, some potentially toxic chemicals were used. This could be a chemical that is destroyed in the baking process, or it could be a chemical that is used in the fabrication of the packaging.
For example, if the packaging contains paper, that fabrication process uses some nasty chemicals, none of which should remain by the time the product gets to you.
The advisories are on literally everything and are basically useless since they don't give you any information about what the relevant chemicals are, how they were used, and what remains of them.
Or somewhere in a component of one of the machines that makes it, even if it doesn't contact the final product. Does your machine have a circuit board in it? Semiconductors! Resin! Solder! Bam: Anything made with it gets a California Proposition 65 warning label.
You are correct that the Prop 65 program as it currently stands is less than useless. This is largely down to the fact that there are penalties if your product is found to contain any substance on the list without disclosure, but there is no penalty for hedging your bets and making the blanket declaration that your product "may" contain chemicals known to the State of California, etc. if you can't be bothered to perform and pay for the testing to certify that it doesn't.
It is therefore cheaper for manufacturers to just plaster the Prop 65 warning label on absolutely everything, so they do. Now the label no longer has any meaning, because its presence does not accurately inform anyone if the product really does contain anything worth knowing about. It's become a Boy Who Cried Wolf situation with consumers, who see the label on every item they touch and still don't understand what it means, so it just becomes another meaningless formality that they ignore along with all the other crap on packaging they've been desensitized to seeing, like the resin identifier codes, worthless shield shaped "guarantee" logo, choking hazard logo, forced arbitration notices, etc., etc.
Tofu is just soy specially prepared, and soy, like many ground crops, grows in soil. Soil/dirt in general can contain trace amounts of metals, one such being lead. Could also be specific to the preparation method, I just remember learning that ground crops generally contain some good and harmful minerals due to, well, dirt.