Blake Livingood, a North Carolina chiropractor and founder of Livingood Daily, has agreed to pay $50,000 to settle California Proposition 65 violations after independent laboratory testing found lead and PFOA in eleven of the company’s supplement products. The settlement, reached in October 2024 with the Environmental Research Center (ERC), a San Diego-based nonprofit that enforces Proposition 65 through private party actions, bars Livingood Daily from selling any covered product in California above established lead and PFOA thresholds without mandated health warnings.
The settlement resolves three separate notices of violation that ERC served on Livingood Daily within a six-week window in the summer of 2024. The covered products span the company’s collagen and greens supplement lines, sold directly to consumers through the Livingood Daily website and on Amazon, where the company has maintained bestseller status. Livingood signed the agreement as President of both DLG Holdings, LLC, and Livingood Practice Management, Inc. on October 30, 2024.
Three Separate Violation Notices Named Eleven Livingood Daily Products in Six Weeks
ERC filed the first notice of violation on June 28, 2024, targeting four Livingood Daily products for lead levels requiring a Prop 65 warning. A second notice on July 12, 2024, named six additional products with the same allegation. A third notice on July 26, 2024, identified three products containing PFOA, a chemical listed under Proposition 65 as both a carcinogen and a reproductive toxin. The three notices together covered eleven products filed within 28 days of one another, indicating ERC’s testing program had identified contamination across multiple product lines in a single investigation.
None of the violation notices triggered criminal enforcement. Private party Prop 65 enforcement, which ERC conducts under a citizen suit provision of the law, results in civil settlements rather than criminal charges. The AG’s office is notified and the settlement posted publicly upon approval, which is how the agreement entered the public record.
Lead Was Found Across the Greens and Collagen Lines and PFOA in Three Plant-Based Products
The eleven covered products span the company’s two flagship supplement categories. The lead-contaminated products include Livingood Daily Chocolate Collagen + Multi Plus, Livingood Daily Greens Unflavored, Livingood Daily Lemon Lime Electrolytes + Energyze Plus, Livingood Daily Original Greens Powder, Livingood Daily Chocolate Greens + Superfoods Plus, Livingood Daily Greens Original, Livingood Daily Berry Greens + Superfoods Plus, and Livingood Daily Berry Frost Electrolytes + Energyze. Three products, Livingood Daily Chocolate Plant Collagen Powder, Livingood Daily Vanilla Plant Collagen Powder, and Livingood Daily Vanilla Collagen + Dr. Livingood Coffee, were found to contain both lead and PFOA.
PFOA is a synthetic chemical used in nonstick coatings and water-resistant materials. Its presence in plant-based collagen powders raises questions about contamination at the manufacturing level. The settlement does not identify how either lead or PFOA entered the products. California’s Prop 65 enforcement mechanism is triggered by the presence of listed chemicals above established thresholds, regardless of how the contamination occurred or whether the manufacturer was aware of it.
The Settlement Bars California Sales Without Warnings and Requires Annual Testing for Three Years
Under the settlement terms, Livingood Daily is permanently enjoined from manufacturing, distributing into California, or directly selling any covered product that exposes a consumer to more than 0.5 micrograms of lead per day or any detectable level of PFOA per day, unless the product carries the required Proposition 65 warning. That warning must state that consuming the product can expose the buyer to chemicals “known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.”
The company must also arrange annual lead and PFOA testing of three randomly selected samples of each covered product for a minimum of three consecutive years. All testing must be conducted using Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry achieving a detection limit of 0.005 mg/kg or less for lead, by an independent laboratory certified by the California Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program or registered with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. If tests confirm no warning is required for three consecutive years, the ongoing testing obligation ends.
The $50,000 Payment Breaks Down into a Civil Penalty and Reimbursement of ERC Costs
The total settlement payment breaks down as follows. The civil penalty is $5,000, of which 75% ($3,750) goes to California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Fund through the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, while ERC retains 25% ($1,250). An additional $10,734.10 reimburses ERC for investigative and litigation costs. Attorney fees of $6,660 go to Michael Freund and Associates, with the remaining $27,605.90 allocated to ERC for in-house legal fees. The full payment was due within five days of the agreement’s effective date. The settlement is not an admission of liability.
Separately from the Prop 65 proceeding, the Better Business Bureau records 47 consumer complaints against Livingood Daily over three years, primarily involving unauthorized recurring charges and difficulty canceling memberships. On Trustpilot and Reddit, a consistent pattern of similar billing complaints appears alongside the company’s otherwise strong product ratings. Those complaints are unrelated to the Prop 65 settlement but document a second area of consumer concern running in parallel to the contamination findings.
Conclusion
Blake Livingood built a million-subscriber YouTube channel, two Amazon bestselling books, and a patient base of 25,000 on a single argument: that mainstream health companies hide toxins in their products and sell them to consumers who trust them. The Prop 65 settlement documents that eleven of his own supplements contained lead and PFOA, a chemical California classifies as a carcinogen and reproductive toxin, and were sold to those same health-conscious consumers without the warnings the law requires. The $50,000 payment, the permanent injunction, and three years of mandatory testing are the legal conclusion to that irony.
