warning labels on products like these.

A warning label is a label designed to inform

consumers about a potential risk.

The more graphic, the more colorized the message.

It does change people's minds.

But here's the thing. Researchers aren't

convinced warning labels actually work.

One of my main complaints about warnings is that

they've become ubiquitous. With

everything in the supermarket is labeled as

dangerous, you don't know what to buy.

We're such a litigious society, and because of

that, we have unnecessary warnings.

Warning labels by themselves is just not

effective. They really need to be coupled with

safe design.

There's some controversy, I think, particularly in

the U.S., because it's a deep value we have, the

value of free choice and liberty.

And so when someone smacks a warning label on

something, we feel like our liberties have been

imposed despite the fact that we're still free to

purchase that item.

So why are warning labels so scary and do they even

work?

There are many different types of warning labels,

but let's split them up into two categories:

'think twice before buying' and 'be careful

using this.' 'Think twice' labels are trying

to warn the consumer that they may want to

reconsider buying this.

So an example could be this product was

manufactured in a facility that also

processes peanuts, which is a known allergen.

'Be careful while using this' is trying to

anticipate basically anything a person could do

wrong with the product.

A plastic bag could be dangerous to a child.

This should not be used as infant formula, and

this one involves electricity, so a lot of

things can go wrong.

Some types of warning labels work, and the

reason why they work is, in part, because they make

people feel bad.

They make people pause and think about the

negative health consequences.

Warning labels really were fairly rare until the

1960s. So until then, about the only products

meriting a warning label were dangerous chemicals

such as sulfuric acid that would be labeled

poison or prescription drugs.

But beginning in the mid 1960s, cigarettes started

to have a warning label, and since that time other

products have followed suit trying to emulate the

cigarette experience.

One of the reasons for this rise is in 1986,

California passed ballot initiative, Proposition

65, into law, which required consumer products

to declare warnings about "chemicals known to the

state to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity."

The two kinds of labels that were mandated, labels

for carcinogens and labels for reproductive

toxicants. The carcinogens include

anything that would cause cancer, the over 70-year

lifetime of daily exposure.

So it now includes 800 chemicals on the list and

the reproductive toxicants include

everything that would affect the growth of the

fetus. So it created a lot of hysteria among

firms because almost everything is potentially

a carcinogen or a reproductive toxicant.

A coffee, for example, has many carcinogens in

coffee, but they're very small and what you want to

do is distinguish really tiny risks from larger

risks.

This has made it difficult for consumers to

distinguish between big risks and small ones.

Experts recommend that companies scale back on

warning labels that involve modest risk.

Researchers also want to know what makes an

effective warning label.

Leslie John did a study to see what it would take

to make people think twice about buying sugary

drinks.

What we did was we worked with a couple of

convenience stores in San Francisco and we varied

the labels that accompanied the sugary

drinks, and every couple of weeks we'd switch up

the labels and we measured, each week,

sales. And what we found, it was only these graphic

warning labels that curbed people's purchasing

of sugary drinks. So the text label didn't do

anything and I think that's partly because

people kind of already know this, but when you

show it graphically, it elicits emotion and

feeling, and it's the feeling that really moves

us to take pause at our actions.

The graphic warning labels decreased people's

propensity to buy sugary drinks by about 15%.

I've developed what I think are criteria for

when they will work.

First, they have to provide new information.

They have to be convincing, so they have

to be credible.

When companies are making statements against their

financial interest, that would tend to be credible.

When we do see labels that work, it's probably driven

by lots of things. But I would surmise that some of

it may also be driven by surprise, by salience.

This is a new weird thing, and so it catches

your attention and so you're more likely to pay

attention to it and it's more likely to affect you.

The 'be careful with this' warning labels may not be

effective either.

No one's reading a book before they use a product,

especially if it's a product that's easy to

use, intuitive to use, or where they can generalize

use. In other words, they've used a product

similar enough that they can figure it out.

You and I have probably seen hundreds of warning

labels in the last week and we probably don't

remember any of them. And that's the problem with

just relying on warning labels.

They're the icing on the cake rather than the end

all be all. As consumers, when we buy product from

online or in a store, we assume that they're safe

and we assume that they've been vetted for

safety. That's not always true.

Sometimes it's not possible to eliminate the

hazard. For example, you can't take the flame out

of a lighter or you're not going to light your

grill. There's something called the safety

hierarchy, and the safety hierarchy first begins

with designing out the risk.

So making sure that you're either eliminating

the risk completely, and then from there, if it's

not possible to design this risk out, it's really

about guarding against it, and that's like a

physical guard or like a procedural, like the

example of a lawn mower.

On my own lawn mower, I have to press a button and

pull a lever for it to run.

And the last tier is actually warning labels.

If you can't guard against it, you can't

eliminate it completely, then you warn.

There's not attempt to convey information

succinctly, it's really an attempt to cover

yourself against all the potential lawsuits and

problems that might arise, which is not that

effective.

The FDA is responsible for regulating things like

food and tobacco products, but the Consumer

Product Safety Commission or the CPSC doesn't have

the same authority to subject consumer products

to the same rigorous standards.

Under the Consumer Product Safety Act, the CPSC

generally needs to rely on voluntary standards

before they can create any mandatory standard.

And these voluntary standards are created in a

consensus-based environment where the

process is about bringing together industry

manufacturers, third-party testers,

consumer organizations, consumers, doctors, and

anybody else who wants to participate, they can.

ASTM is a standards development organization

that facilitates the development of voluntary

consensus standards.

So they bring together stakeholders who are

interested in developing a voluntary standard.

The CPSC is required by Congress to first work

through the voluntary standards process to

develop standards for products before moving on

to developing a regulation. And they can

move on to a regulation if one of three conditions

occurs. One is if they go to stakeholders and say,

'hey, we think a voluntary standard is

needed,' and if stakeholders come back

manufacturers and say, 'no, we're not doing it,'

then CPSC can proceed.

Or if industry and stakeholders say, 'yes, we

are going to proceed and develop a voluntary

standard,' and they develop one, but it's not

stringent enough to address the key hazards,

then CPSC can move forward with the

regulation. Or thirdly, if they develop a

voluntary standard and it is stringent enough to

address the key hazards, but they aren't seeing

compliance in the field, then CPSC can move

forward.

One safety issue that has led to regulation is

furniture tipping over, especially onto children.

CPSC has documented nearly 200

tip-over-related child fatalities between January

2000 and April 2022.

Now, there is a federal law called the Sturdy Act,

which was adopted into a mandatory safety standard

in April 2023.

It's currently in the transition to being

implemented across industry.

The Sturdy Act is a prime example of how warning

labels work really well with the strong standard,

but alone would be insufficient.

So everybody wants to do what they can to keep

dressers safe. There's just been a lot of

questions around what that actually means.

So it's really about the devil in the details.

There are good players, good actors and

manufacturers that are trying really hard to make

sure that they build a very stable dresser, but

there are also bad players who might be

trying to skirt the system because before

sturdy act, it was a voluntary standard.

And so you might get that one manufacturer that's

trying to cut a corner and save a little bit of

money by using a less stable design and putting

people at risk. So really Sturdy is very good at

making sure that everybody is playing by

the same rules.

Warning labels may also help companies' bottom

lines.

Companies often put warnings on products to

cover themselves with potential litigation.

So it's not necessarily to inform consumers, but

to try to head off a potential complaint down

the road.

The warning label from the U.S., as most people know

who have seen cigarette packs, is this small

little warning label says the tobacco industry was

lobbying for this.

The label does not have any noticeable impact on

public health and smoking, but provides a

very handy legal defense in a court case in case

the tobacco industry is sued for wrongful death.

Vasquez's research shows that cigarette warning

labels don't do much to change consumer behavior,

which hasn't really hurt companies' bottom lines.

And what I found is that there was no effect of the

warning labels, any of the different graphic

warning labels in terms of improving consumer

comprehension. You can find survey evidence that

says if you ask people, show them a graphic

warning label, does this make you think more about

quitting? And they'll say yes.

But in terms of actually affecting smoking

behavior, no evidence in any country that they've

shifted smoking behavior.

It has been used as a defense in a court of law.

'Well, see, there was this warning label.

You should have known.

You assumed the risk.' This is the assumption of

risk argument.

Some people feel like certain warning labels are

an unnecessary overreach, and a federal court

recently agreed.