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

Vol. 1103 | 23 Sep 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 July 2019, there were 219 60-day notices served for the violation of Prop 65, which was significantly higher than the 151 60-day notices served in June 2019. A total of 53% of the notices were for exposure to phthalates, 27% of notices were for exposure to lead and the remaining were for other chemicals.

Food accounted for 26% (56 notices: 46 for acrylamide and 10 for lead), followed by bags/pouches/cases for 15% (all 32 notices for phthalate content), and Sports & Recreation 7% (15 notices: 13 for phthalates and 2 for lead).

There were 13 60-day notices (6%) served for phthalates in packaging. Another observation is that there were two 60-day notices for hexavalent chromium (Chromium VI) in leather products such as gloves and footwear. This continues the previous trend we observed over past few months.

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

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