How much should I worry/care about the "Known to the State of California" warnings on fuel canisters?
A lot of outdoor gear has warnings like the following,
WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.
while sometimes it says
may contain chemicals
To keep this questions from being too broad, I am going to limit it to just fuel canisters. While there are carcinogens produced by operating a canister stove, a campfire will also produce them and I am unaware of any canister fuels that lack the warning.
So how much should I worry/care about these warnings?
2 answers
You should not consume the canisters or warning labels while in California.
Seriously they are not actually very helpful, since they have neither the chemicals nor specific risks. The list of possible chemicals is pretty long and varied.
If you know what you are using (a component of gasoline) there are specific fact sheets.
Generally the OSHA acceptable exposure limits are in ppm for a short term exposure, in well ventilated spaces with small sources like one would expect for camp stove use you are pretty unlikely to surpass that. Though there is no certainly safe dose of most chemicals.
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/19406. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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Most of the time, the "Known to the State of California" warning is an incantation to ward off lawyers. That's not true for fuel.
White gas/Coleman fuel/whatever-it's-called has significant amounts of benzene, a known carcinogen, in it, as does kerosene; other hydrocarbon fuels will have trace amounts. Benzene is destroyed during combustion, but the vapors from unburned fuel are a hazard. Make sure you close the fuel bottle tightly when it's not in use, handle the fuel outdoors or in a well-ventilated area, and make sure your stove is burning cleanly (it should produce a blue flame indicating complete combustion; a yellow flame indicates that the fuel isn't being fully burned).
This is a great example of why that warning is a problem: the occasional real hazard (such as benzene in fuel) gets lost in a sea of empty statements.
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/19409. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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