California Proposition 65 Notice.

What this means in plain English

California's Proposition 65 requires businesses to provide warnings about products that may expose California consumers to chemicals on California's published list. The threshold California uses is deliberately conservative and applies to many roasted, baked, and cooked foods sold throughout the state — including coffee, baked goods, French fries, potato chips, almonds, prune juice, and many items found in any grocery store and restaurant.

The chemical involved here is acrylamide. It forms naturally when foods are heated above about 248°F (120°C) — including any roast or bake process. It is not added to coffee. It is a byproduct of the roasting itself.

For coffee specifically, California courts and regulators have acknowledged that the cancer-risk link from acrylamide in coffee is not established, and California issued a specific exemption rule for coffee in 2019 — but the warning continues to be applied widely as a precaution, because the cost of being wrong on a Prop 65 case is high.

We post this warning on packaging and on this page out of an abundance of caution to meet California requirements, not because we have evidence our coffee or tea is unsafe.

What's on our packaging

Every Coastal Brewing Co. coffee bag, tea tin, matcha pouch, chai tin, and any future functional product we sell into California carries the warning above on the label, in the legally required format and font size, with the link to www.P65Warnings.ca.gov/food.

Functional / mushroom products

Functional and mushroom-based products may also trigger Prop 65 warnings for naturally occurring trace levels of cadmium, lead, or arsenic that come from the soil mushrooms grow in. California's labeling thresholds are stricter than federal food-safety thresholds, so warnings may apply even though our products meet all federal food-safety standards.

If Coastal offers functional or mushroom coffees in the future, the warning will appear on the package along with a brief explanation matching this page.

What this is not

This notice is not an admission that Coastal's products are unsafe. Our products meet all applicable U.S. food safety standards. The California Prop 65 framework operates on conservative warning thresholds that exceed federal safety thresholds, so warnings are routinely applied to common foods.

If you live outside California, you'll see the same warning on the package because we ship the same packaging nationwide. We don't run a separate California-only label run.

More information

• California's official Prop 65 site: www.P65Warnings.ca.gov
• Specifically about food: www.P65Warnings.ca.gov/food
• The 2019 Prop 65 coffee exemption (OEHHA): oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/coffee

If you have a question about this warning, write us at bpo@achievemor.io. We're happy to walk you through it.

See also FDA & Health Claims Disclaimer.