Compliance
23 October 2026
California Proposition 65 does not ban anything. It requires that a business give a "clear and reasonable warning" before knowingly exposing anyone to a listed chemical. That is the whole obligation — and yet it generates more supplier questionnaires than almost any other US rule, because enforcement is carried out by private parties filing 60-day notices, not by an agency doing inspections.
For a phone case, the practical question is narrow: does your product, at realistic exposure levels, contain a listed chemical above the safe-harbour threshold? If yes, a warning. If no, no warning — and the way you prove "no" is a test report, not an opinion.
A bare TPU shell is a simple object: thermoplastic polyurethane, pigment, maybe a UV stabiliser. The exposure route that Prop 65 cares about here is dermal contact, and the amount that migrates from a cured TPU surface is normally negligible.
Trouble arrives with the format, not the material. Soft PVC grips and inserts, plastisol prints, some adhesives on fold-over closures, and recycled-content boards and inks all carry a higher chance of phthalates or heavy metals. If your line includes a squishy character case or a heavily printed sleeve, that SKU deserves its own answer.
| What | Where it hides in a case | Why it is listed |
|---|---|---|
| DEHP and certain phthalates | Soft PVC inserts, plastisol inks, some flexible grips | Reproductive toxicity |
| Lead | Pigments (especially older reds and yellows), recycled board, solder on metal plates | Developmental and reproductive harm |
| Cadmium | Bright yellow, orange and red pigments; metal accessories | Cancer |
| Di-isononyl phthalate (DINP) | Soft PVC of any kind | Cancer listing — treat as listed until your lab says otherwise |
On a straight TPU or silicone case with no printed insert and no PVC, the usual result is that none of these are present at a reportable level. On a soft PVC novelty case, the odds flip.
There are two accepted formats. The long form names the chemical and the endpoint:
The short form is allowed where the full warning will not fit — "⚠ WARNING: Cancer and Reproductive Harm — www.P65Warnings.ca.gov." A phone case sleeve has very little printable area, so the short form plus a QR code to the full text is a common solution, and it is accepted.
The warning has to be attached to the product, the packaging, or — for online sales — the listing, so that the buyer sees it before purchase. For a B2B shipment it is normally printed on the inner sleeve, not on the outer carton, because the outer carton is not what reaches the consumer.
Two failure modes cost importers money, and they are opposite.
In practice a US buyer asks for three documents: a Prop 65 statement, the heavy-metals test behind it, and the phthalate test behind it. The statement should name the SKU family it covers, not the whole catalogue, because a statement covering 293 SKUs on the strength of one test is the kind of thing that does not survive a second look.
Our own position is deliberately narrow: we will tell you which material formats have current reports and which do not, and we will not write a blanket "Prop 65 compliant" letter for formats nobody has tested. That conversation is easier at quotation stage than after a container has landed.
Prop 65 is a US state disclosure rule; REACH SVHC and SCIP are EU disclosure duties. They are not interchangeable and a REACH report is not a Prop 65 answer, because the chemical lists, the thresholds and the exposure assumptions differ. If you sell into both markets, budget for two document sets, not one. The REACH and SCIP article covers the EU half.
No. It is a California statute, but because it applies to products sold in California it effectively sets the national default — most US retailers apply it across all states rather than run two SKUs.
Usually not, provided the pigment and any printed elements pass heavy-metals and phthalate testing. The answer is per material format, not per product category, and it belongs in a test report rather than an opinion.
It is legally safer than omitting it, but US buyers increasingly read a blanket warning as evidence the supplier has not tested. Both routes should be a decision, not a default.