Scraping together your rent payment by cashing in dumped appliances (*) at your local scrap metal yard? Dropping off your vehicle’s used oil filter and dead battery because you’re just plain environmentally conscientious?
Congratulations – you’re gonna get cancer. And your next child will have three heads.
Ok, we’re overstating it a tad. But SA Recycling LLC, of Anaheim, does want you to know that visiting their facility at 3200 E. Frontera St., lays you open to “chemicals known to the state to cause cancer and/or birth defects or reproductive harm.”
Complying with Proposition 65 (aka The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986), the nice guys at SA ran an ad in yesterday’s (1.16) Los Angeles Times giving, as required, “a clear and reasonable warning” re 24 or so of their locations in California.
They mention stuff that makes you a li’l queasy just reading about it – “exhaust from heavy equipment, vapors from vehicle dismantling operations” and “dust” and “chemicals including diesel exhaust, gasoline vapors, lead, benzene and formaldehyde.”
Now, nobody’s saying don’t recycle your stuff just because of the above. We are saying you might wanna practice holding your breath long enough to wheel in that old fridge, grab your $20 or whatever and get the hell out. Or you could wear a mask – all the rage, we hear, in smoggy Japan, China, various Third World hellholes and Cleveland.
(*) This is seriously not acceptable behavior in Mission Viejo, ok?
