Scientists and physicians associated with the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) report that California's Proposition 65 (Prop65), a law whose purported intent was to improve the public's health, is misdirected and highly unlikely to effect such improvement. Other states and the U.S. Congress should consider these findings as they deliberate similar prospective "right to know" legislation. ACSH's reasoning and conclusions have been published in a critique titled " California's Proposition 65 and Its Impact on Public Health."
Prop65, passed into law in 1986, was designed to limit public exposure to possibly hazardous chemicals those that might cause cancer or reproductive toxicity. Prop65 restricts discharge of listed chemicals into known sources of drinking water and mandates consumer-product warning labels.
Regrettably, Prop65 does not focus on known risk factors for human cancer or reproductive toxicity. Instead, it relies on lists of chemicals information on many of whose negative health effects is based on high-dose animal tests and is not directly relevant to typical human exposures.
Prop65 is essentially a "right-to-know" law that seeks to provide consumers with information. The law makes no provision, however, for educating the public about the risks of exposure to the listed chemicals, nor does it distinguish between the level of hazard or risk associated with different chemicals. Thus, a substance that is minimally toxic or carcinogenic will carry essentially the same warning as one that poses a much greater risk.
There are no official information-gathering provisions embedded in Prop65, which means that it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine its impact on public health over the last 14 years. By failing to focus on the known risk factors associated with specific health problems like human cancer, Prop65 diminishes the effectiveness of public health efforts to educate people about such risks.
According to Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, president of the American Council on Science and Health, "The public should be informed that a risk to health depends on both the degree of hazard as well as the degree of exposure to any potentially toxic substance. Brief exposures to trace levels of environmental chemicals are extremely unlikely to pose a real health risk. Prop65 masks this fact by its failure to assess and communicate risk reasonably."
