Warning Labels

The highlighted warning in this image sounds like a joke, but it’s part of a real set of FAQs on a pacemaker information site.

Overall, it’s good news.  You can use a lawn mower and other power tools with a pacemaker, but not chainsaws:

Can I use a chainsaw?

Chainsaws are hard to operate at a safe distance from your chest pacemaker.  They should be avoided altogether.

Hard to argue with the factual assertion.  The user would either: (1) have to rip the pacemaker out of his chest and leave it in the house; (2) set the chainsaw up in the backyard, start it, and run like hell; or (3) tap in to Rubber Man’s secret.

We love pictorial warnings at Lawhaha.com, as shown by the samples here, here, here, here, and here.  These are supposedly universal warnings designed to be understood by everyone.  As in these warnings on the outside of a dehumidifier box, they are often accompanied by written warnings.  But not everyone can read the written warnings, either because of language barriers or simply an inability to read.

So how do these pictorial warnings rate?  When I look at the first one, all I can think of is the David Bowie song, “Let’s Dance.”  What is it trying to convey?  That you need two people to pick the thing up.  I think that one probably works, assuming for the sake of argument that people need a warning not to pick up large heavy objects without assistance.

These next three warnings on the same box are a mixed bag.  No idea what “4” stands for.  Assuming it’s something on a scale, but “4” out of what?  And what is it measuring?  Please send word.  The second one might be a warning to not put your wine glass on the dehumidifier, but, on the outside packaging, it’s probably a warning that the contents are breakable.  The third one?  Who knows?  Don’t stomp on it?  Don’t kick it?  Hmm, maybe don’t stand on it, which I could see, but if that’s the case, shouldn’t they have a box under the boot?

We like to have fun with these, but let’s face it, the real problem is that it’s almost impossible to meaningfully convey most product warnings via a symbol.

And a whole lot of other undesirable results.

The World Health Organization (WHO) directs, in Article 11 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, that parties to the convention “implement large, rotating health warnings on all tobacco product packaging and labelling.”

The WHO website shows twenty countries (and their mandated warnings) currently participating, including Brazil, which is where the Florida International University law student who gave me this pack of Marlboros purchased it.

Some of the warnings are much more graphic.

Other countries mandate pictorial warnings without belonging to the WHO convention.  In the United States, graphic pictorial warnings on cigarette packages were torpedoed by a lawsuit in which the tobacco industry successfully argued before the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. FDA that requiring them to put pictorial warnings on “the top 50 percent of the front and rear panels of cigarette packages and 20 percent of the area of each cigarette advertisement” violated their First Amendment rights.

The warnings were authorized by the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 1989, which directed the U.S. Dep’t of Health and Human Services to adopt regulations requiring cigarettes to bear “color graphics depicting the negative health consequences of smoking.”

The Obama Administration backed away from the requirements after the decision.

The data is mixed as to whether pictorial cigarette warnings change smoking behavior.  A study of 4000 smokers in Malaysia and Thailand found the warnings had an effect in Thailand, but not Malaysia.

Okay, this warning label, sent along by lawyer comic and insurance expert Randy Maniloff, does not actually cover turkey roasting, but maybe that’s because there wasn’t any room left after warning people not to toast their “Danish, Muffin [or] Cake” in the toaster.

But wait, what’s up with the warning to not put “Bread” in the toaster?

–Thanks to Randy Maniloff.

A student sent me this.  Not sure where it was taken, but gotta love it.  A much better attention-getter than the usual caution cones.

It raises the larger question of “Do people really slip on banana peels?”  Yes.  While slipping on a banana peel is a comedic cliché, it happens.

The famous Prosser, Wade & Schwartz Torts casebook contains a trilogy of cases involving plaintiffs who slipped on banana peels.  In keeping with the comedic tradition, our discussion of the cases ends with this question:  “Before we move on, what do the three banana cases all have in common?”  Pause, bewildered looks.  “They all went up on … a peel.”  Drum roll.

Mythbusters found there’s nothing particularly slippery about banana peels, but Googling the issue brings up several recent instances of people falling on them.  In December 2013, a Staten Island man slipped on a banana peel and fell onto the subway tracks.

All guitar players have been painfully poked more than once by the sharp ends of the strings where they wrap around the tuners.  In the 1930s, Kluson marketed “SafeTiString” tuner posts where the string ends could be neatly tucked away in a slot in the posts to “banish the peril of injured, cut or bruised fingers.”

Neat invention, but apparently too late to save the poor woman pictured in this advertisement reprinted in Vintage Guitar magazine in the Feb. 2013 issue.  She appears to be bleeding to death.

Click to enlarge the thumbnail to appreciate her plight.