U.S. – April 2019 California Proposition 65 – 60-Day Notices Analysis

Vol. 1082 | 22 May 2019

The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, commonly referred to as Proposition 65 (Prop 65), is enforced by the California Attorney General’s office or any district attorney or certain city attorneys or by any individual acting in the public interest. Prop 65 requires that an individual acting in the public interest, to enforce the Act give notice of the impending action to the person alleged to be committing the violation, along with the Attorney General, district attorneys and certain city attorneys in which the violation is alleged to have occurred. The notice must be sent to these parties no less than 60 days before commencing the action; thus this notice is commonly referred to as the “60-day Notice of Violation”.

In April 2019, there were 221 60-day notices served for violation of Prop 65, which was up from 184 notices served in March 2019. The majority of the  of the notices – representing 65% – were for exposure to phthalates, 16% of notices were for exposure to lead and rest of them were for other chemicals.

Bags, which include cases, pouches and packaging accounted for 21% (47 notices), followed by food with 14% (31 notices). It is interesting to note that various types of gloves were targeted three times for presence of hexavalent chromium; 3D pens with ABS filament were targeted three times for styrene; talc body powder was targeted seven times for presence of arsenic, lead and various other substances; and in the storage/organization category various type of organizers (shoe, over the door, hampers, etc.) were targeted seven times for presence of phthalates.

A detailed analysis of the Prop 65 60-day notices for April 2019 is below:

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For questions, please contact Pratik Ichhaporia (pratik.ichhaporia@intertek.com, +1-847-212-8273).