The $28 billion styrene industry has filed a lawsuit in Sacramento Superior Court to block California environmental officials from listing the product as a cause of cancer and birth defects.
Judge Shellyanne W.L. Change declined last week to temporarily stop the states Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment from including styrene on its Proposition 65 warning list, but she did set an Aug. 12 hearing on why she shouldnt issue a preliminary injunction to prevent the state from taking the action.
A spokesman for the Styrene Information and Research Center based in Arlington, Va., said in an interview Tuesday that the group wants to prevent the Proposition 65 listing "mainly because styrene isnt a carcinogen, and no regulatory or authoritative body in the world has classified it as such."
The spokesman, Joe Walker, said the Proposition 65 warning "would foster the potential for alarmist reports over nothing" and "be very damaging for no good reason because styrene has been used safely for many, many years in thousands and thousands of products."
According to court papers filed by the state, the World Health Organizations International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2002 concluded that styrene is "possibly carcinogenic to humans." The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration said exposure to the substance "may involve" maladies such as "headache, fatigue, dizziness, confusion, drowsiness, malaise, difficulty in concentrating, and a feeling of intoxication."
"From our perspective, we feel were required by Proposition 65 as well as certain provisions of the (California) Labor Code and some provisions of the federal OSHA hazardous communication standards ... to list certain substances under Proposition 65," said Carol Monahan-Cummings, chief counsel for OEHHA.
Monahan-Cummings said the listing is "a ministerial process" that relies on OSHA and "related agencies" to provide the science that backs up the action.
OEHHA, an arm of the California Environmental Protection Agency, announced in June that it planned to include styrene on its Proposition 65 list. The 1986 ballot measure approved by California voters requires businesses to list warnings about the use of the targeted substances to protect the public from potentially harmful exposures.
Styrene is used in food-service packaging such as egg cartons, coffee cups and the like, as well in thousands of other products ranging from bicycle helmets to boats, bathtubs and synthetic marble, Walker said. The Sacramento office of the legal and lobbying firm Greenberg Traurig LLP filed court papers on behalf of the industry that said its products are sold in a "highly competitive" marketplace. Including styrene on the Proposition 65 list, the attorneys said, would lead consumers to abandon styrene-based products in favor of other substances.
"As soon as California lists styrene as a known carcinogen, SIRC and its members will be vulnerable to false claims that their products are dangerous to their employees and their customers," the industrys lawyers argued in their court papers. "News media looking for an alarming headline and organizations promoting themselves as advisers on green living or environmental watchdogs will claim there is a known carcinogen in take-out food containers, bike helmets, egg cartons and berry baskets ... Styrene will permanently lose public confidence and market share."
A legal response filed by the state attorney generals office said the "balance of harm" favors the listing and that the industrys argument that it would be stigmatized by the Proposition 65 warning "is complete speculation."
"If the court delays the listing of styrene under Proposition 65, and ultimately it is found that styrene is known to the state to cause cancer and must be listed, there will be a delay in providing information to the public," the states lawyers said. "That delay has the potential for causing significant harm to human health and the environment."
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