The California Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), as lead agency for the implementation of the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 (Proposition 65), has developed a procedure for prioritizing chemicals for consideration under Proposition 65 by the "State’s qualified experts". Two committees of the Science Advisory Board (SAB), known as the Carcinogen Identification Committee, and the Developmental and Reproductive Toxicant (DART) Identification Committee, serve as the State’s qualified experts for rendering an opinion as to whether a chemical is known to the State to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.

The procedure used by OEHHA to identify, prioritize and select candidate chemicals for evaluation by the SAB Committees is described in, "Procedure for Prioritizing Candidate Chemicals for Consideration Under Proposition 65 by the States Qualified Experts," May 1997, and is available on the Internet at www.oehha.ca.gov. On October 3, 1997, OEHHA announced the release of draft priority assignments and draft data summaries for 28 of 30 chemicals selected for prioritization with respect to their potential to cause cancer. (Prioritization of two of the 30 chemicals, C.I. solvent yellow 14 and salicylazosulfapyridine, was postponed; both were listed as causing cancer on May 15, 1998 via the authoritative bodies listing mechanism of Proposition 65.) The October 3, 1997 announcement initiated a 60-day public comment period, which included a public workshop held November 18, 1997. After review and careful consideration of the comments received, the priority assignments have been finalized. The only final priority which differs from the draft assignment is for furfural, for which the final priority is "medium high".

In accordance with OEHHA’s prioritization procedure, all chemicals with final priority assignments of "high" carcinogenicity concern are placed on the final Candidate List (Table 2). All other final prioritized chemicals will be placed in Category II. Chemicals are selected from the Candidate List for the development of draft hazard identification documents and subsequent consideration for listing by the Carcinogen Identification Committee of OEHHA’s Science Advisory Board. The final priority assignments for the 28 chemicals are given below in Table 1.

Table 1. Final Priority Assignments

CASRN = Chemical Abstracts Service Registration Number

Table 2. Final Candidate List as of June 12, 1998

CASRN = Chemical Abstracts Service Registration Number

n.i.c. = No Identified Concern

Copies of the final data summaries and priority assignments for these chemicals are available from the Proposition 65 Implementation Office at the address and telephone number indicated below, or from the Internet at the following address: www.oehha.ca.gov/prop65/pdf/dsb2rev.pdf

Download the set of final data summaries and priority assignments as a 289 kb Adobe Acrobat PDF file.

Cynthia Oshita
Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment
1001 I Street, P.O. Box 4010
Sacramento, California 95812
Fax (916) 327-1097
(916) 445-6900

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For questions regarding Proposition 65, please contact the Cynthia Oshita in the Proposition 65 Implementation Program

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