The Prop. 65 guide to death

NAME YOUR poison. Seriously. If something that comes out of a tailpipe or a lab is going to kill you anyway, what dangerous gunk would you pick to do you in?

California makes it easy to choose. Thanks to Proposition 65, the toxics-alert law, you can pick your own personal nasty-exit substance. Take deep and deadly breaths at the gas pump. Inhale secondhand smoke. In sufficient quantities, you could probably OD on asphalt fumes, lead-content soup bowls or PVC pipe.

Or you could just OD on French fries. If the carbs don’t get you, the acrylamide could, or so says the state of California.

Acrylamide sounds like something Barbies are made of, but in fact it’s used to treat wastewater and is in cement and permanent-press shirts, as well as French fries. It occurs naturally in varying degrees in roasted asparagus, canned black olives and practically an entire breakfast menu: toast, coffee, cereals, prune juice.

Turn up the heat on most foods, and you crank up the acrylamide, especially spuds, which is bad news for me because I love burned cookies, scorched marshmallows, seared potatoes -- all the carbonized delicacies of my childhood.

This is also bad news for KFC. A couple of years ago, California sued KFC Corp. and other big fast-food and snack companies because that yummy fried or baked potatoey flavor comes with a big ol’ side of acrylamide.

In this game of chicken, KFC blinked first. It didn’t admit to doing anything wrong but will put up about a third of a million in penalties, and put up Proposition 65 warning signs and brochures in California outlets. The agreement specifies how big signs must be (at least 10-by-10 inches) and the typeface for the word “Warning” (ITC Garamond bold condensed, a font not unlike what you’re reading right now).

Anything that can cause cancer or damage your reproductive system is a candidate for the Proposition 65 list, now more than 750 substances, some as venerably villainous as arsenic and mercury, and some as obscure as the antibiotic daunorubicin hydrochloride, and as unlikely as bracken fern, a plant that can cause stomach cancer. Acrylamide’s been on the list for 17 years.

In the 21 years since it passed, Proposition 65 has muscled manufacturers to change their ways -- taking toluene out of some nail polish, lead out of dishes and Tums tablets, mercury out of hemorrhoid cream. And I suspect company lawyers are secretly pleased at being forced to post warning notices: It may let them off the liability hook.

But I think we’ve ODed on warning signs too. We’re so used to seeing them, we’ve stopped seeing them. I know they’re in liquor stores. Are they posted at my hardware store? Probably. My hair salon? Dunno.

After 21 years, we’re due for a redesign. The direst warning won’t register if people tune it out. I’m imagining a KFC some months from now, where the warning signs have already become like wallpaper and the second thing that gets tossed away -- after the wrapper -- is the Proposition 65 brochure.

Even Brooks Brothers shakes up the classics sometimes. Perhaps it’s time to spiff up the look and the message of Prop. 65 alerts. Maybe the warning could be more visual than verbal, something that looks like an old-fashioned gas gauge with a needle that registers between “skull and crossbones” and “Smiley Face MD” And then no more than a dozen words to explain the risk, from birth defects to pancreatic cancer, with website info for further details.

Long, carefully crafted warnings -- like the signs specified in the KFC agreement, which are about a third as long as this column -- are lawyer certified, but who’s gonna read about PhiP(2-Amino-1-methyl-6-phenylimidazol [4,5b] pyridine) when all the other signs are beckoning with come-hither words like tasty, crispy, creamy, spicy?

Informed risk means information that’s both published and processed. We all deserve to know exactly what we’re gobbling, beyond “crunchy” and “juicy” and all the other sales-pitch adjectives. Some people take chances by base jumping. Others do it by eating French fries 10 times a week. Splat versus fat.

But a base-jumper knows how badly gravity could mess with him. A fast-foodie deserves no less. Super-size us -- with something worth knowing.