In response to requests from trade associations representing meat industry interests, California EPA’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) has extended the comment period on its proposal to list nitrite in combination with amines or amides as known to the state to cause cancer under the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 (Prop. 65). If these substances are added to the Prop. 65 list, companies making products containing them will be required to provide warnings to California consumers. Comments are now requested by May 8, 2014. See OEHHA News Release, February 28, 2014.
Meanwhile, OEHHA has also issued the agenda for the March 27, 2014, meeting of the Biomonitoring California scientific Guidance Panel, which will convene in Oakland; the meeting will be accessible via Webinar. Program and laboratory updates are on the agenda, and the panel will also discuss chromium as a potential designated chemical and review as potential priority chemicals antimony, barium, cesium, cobalt, manganese, molybdenum, platinum, thallium, tungsten, and uranium. A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency representative will discuss that agency’s perspectives during a session titled “Best Practices for Biomarker Collection, Analysis, and Interpretation.”
