Hey, Don't Say They Didn't Warn You . . .

It's just one of many warnings submitted to his annual Wacky Warning Label Contest. This year, first prize went to a heat gun that removes paint by blasting it with air heated to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The warning label said: "Do not use the heat gun as a hair dryer."

Second prize went to the warning label on a kitchen knife: "Never try to catch a falling knife."

Third prize went to a cocktail napkin decorated with a map of the seacoast of Hilton Head, S.C., and a warning: "Caution: Not to be used for navigation."

Among the honorable mentions was the warning on a bottle of dried bobcat urine used to keep rodents away from garden plants: "Not for human consumption."

"Warning labels are a sign of our lawsuit-plagued times," says Dorigo Jones, who is president of Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch. "Because of the unpredictability of the legal system, companies feel that they have to warn against the obvious. And it has the opposite effect -- fewer people read these warning labels because they're getting longer and more absurd. "

Signs of Things to Come

"Warning labels can be traced back to biblical times," says Bruce Silverglade.

He cites the Book of Leviticus, Chapter 11, which identifies the meat of pigs, shellfish, camels and, alas, badgers as "unclean." He also cites Chapter 19, which states that eating meat left over for more than two days is "an abomination."

Silverglade is kidding, sort of. He's the legal director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group that loves warning labels. CSPI is currently lobbying for a label on soda to warn potential drinkers that guzzling it will make you fat and rot your teeth.

Aside from Leviticus, the history of warning labels is fairly short. In 1938 Congress passed a law mandating that food products carry a list of ingredients. In 1973 Congress voted to require labels on products containing "toxic substances." The law created three levels of warnings: "Caution" for stuff that's a little scary, "Warning" for stuff that's more scary, and "Danger!" for stuff that you definitely don't want to serve to guests at a formal dinner party.

Meanwhile, in 1966, the feds mandated that cigarette packs carry a warning from the surgeon general. And in 1989, alcoholic beverages got their own surgeon general's warning.

In 1985, in a series of congressional hearings that received more publicity than a Super Bowl, Tipper Gore, wife of then-Sen. Al Gore, testified in favor of a bill to put warning labels on pop music albums containing sexually explicit or violent lyrics. Before action could be taken, 22 record companies agreed to label the offending albums with stickers that say, "Parental Warning Explicit Content." Since then, innumerable hormone-addled teenagers have looked for the sticker when seeking music guaranteed to drive their parents batty.

Today, several federal agencies are in the warning label business: the Food and Drug Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and, of course, the FBI, whose warnings against video piracy have appeared on rented movies since 1975. All of these agencies take their job very seriously.