Fighting for the Right To Know About Heavy Metals in Products
WHEN is suing Glanbia Nutritionals Inc. under Proposition 65 to advocate for the public's right-to-know about the alleged levels of heavy metals in some of the Glanbia products.
Drivers of Outrage
California voters passed Proposition 65 in 1986 by an overwhelming margin. The law offers a basic protection: most companies doing business in California must warn Californian consumers before knowingly exposing them to established levels of chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.
In 2025, independent heavy-metals testing commissioned by WHEN identified lead in certain dietary supplement and nutrition powders sold under the Amazing Grass and Optimum Nutrition brands. Based on the testing results and its exposure analysis, WHEN filed Proposition 65 Notices of Violation against Glanbia Nutritionals, Inc. and related entities, alleging that certain Amazing Grass and Optimum Nutrition products expose consumers to lead, at levels requiring a Proposition 65 warning.
The parties were unable to resolve WHEN’s claims through negotiations, and WHEN is now pursuing separate enforcement actions seeking appropriate injunctive relief, including Proposition 65 warnings and/or reformulation.
These mandates are coming at a time when much of the Arctic is warming 4 times faster than the global average, and Alaskan communities are experiencing rising temperatures, flooding, thawing permafrost, increasing wildfire smoke, declining fisheries, and disrupted water and food sources.
In response, 8 youth plaintiffs — ages 11 to 22, many from frontline and Indigenous communities — filed a lawsuit, Sagoonick v. State of Alaska II, on May 24, 2024. They argue that the State’s advancement of the project places their health, safety, and access to natural resources in jeopardy and is in direct violation of their constitutional rights to a climate system that sustains human life.
On March 11, 2025, a lower court dismissed the case, holding that the issue was not subject to judicial review — a decision that effectively insulated the state’s actions from constitutional scrutiny.
900+
CHEMICALS
Listed on California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment's Proposition 65 List California OEHHA
0.5
MICROGRAMS PER DAY
Allowable level of oral lead consumption California OEHHA
63%
OF MANUFACTURERS
Reported that Proposition 65-triggered reformulations influence the composition of their products sold outside California Ohayon et al., 2025
When Exceptions Become Loopholes
WHEN opted not to settle because of two common practices in Proposition 65 lawsuits that can substantially reduce consumer protection. Proposition 65 regulations allow companies to exclude certain amounts of Proposition 65-listed chemicals in food from their exposure calculations when they can show that the chemical is “naturally occurring.” In practice, a company may argue that lead absorbed from soil should be discounted even though consumers ingest it all the same.
WHEN is standing up against companies who use the naturally occurring defense, and especially those that are improperly applying it or trying to extend it from one product to the next without proving that no human intervention was the cause of the chemical exposure. A person’s body does not distinguish between lead introduced during manufacturing and lead taken up from contaminated soil. Treating one as effectively invisible can deprive consumers of information the law was enacted to provide and reduce manufacturers’ incentives to source cleaner ingredients, improve manufacturing processes, or reformulate their products.
“A person’s body does not distinguish between lead introduced during manufacturing and lead taken up from contaminated soil.”
Using the naturally occurring defense, Glanbia secured consent judgments for several of their product lines, allowing them a higher lead allowance than the Safe Harbor established by OEHHA. In other words, many of their products are on the shelves with no warning becasue they are permitted an extra allowance of lead; something the everyday consumer would not be aware of. The Optimum Nutrition judgment arose from a case brought by a different nonprofit, while the Amazing Grass judgment concerned different products. Those distinctions matter: neither negotiated judgment should automatically determine the outcome of litigation involving different claims, parties, or products. Worse yet, companies should not get special permission to expose in perpetuity more levels of chemicals than what Prop 65 allows.
The problem extends beyond Glanbia. Consent judgments can allow privately negotiated resolutions from earlier cases to constrain future enforcement, even when the later dispute differs in material ways. That risks turning settlements that were never fully litigated into lasting barriers to accountability. Consumers should not lose the protections of Proposition 65 because of negotiations in prior matters to which they were not parties, and everyday people deserve to know what is in the products they consume, whether the contaminants were introduced during manufacturing or absorbed from the soil.
The Bigger Picture
Potential Outcomes
Success in the lawsuits would result in Glanbia either reformulating its products to reduce their alleged lead and cadmium content and/or to provide the appropriate Proposition 65 warning label on the products alerting consumers to the presence of heavy metals above the Proposition 65 Safe Harbor.