Tobacco Documents Online

DATE: May 5, 1994 • SUB/ECT: Meeting of Science Advisory Panel (Prop. 65) 5/5/94 On May 5, 1994 1 attended the meeting of the Development and Reproductive Toxicant (DART) Identification Committee in Sacramento, California. This committee is a panel of experts, formerly called the Science Advisory Panel. It serves tO. ~'ecommend, to the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHI-IA) chemicals for listing under the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 (California's ~Proposition 65"). Items pertaining to this committee and its responsibilities are enclosed as Exhibits 1 through 4. My purpose, in attending this meeting, was to determine the committee's current position with regard to ETS and to obtain a sense of its future actions. The reason for attending this particular meeting is contained in the attached agenda (Exhibit 5). This agenda indicates that ETS was to be considered briefly at this meeting with regard to the committee's desire to consider, in detail, at some future meeting whether or not it should listed as a developmental and reproductive toxicant under the Proposition 65 definition. The opening session of this meeting was directed atseeking the committee's acceptance of the modified criteria for identifying DARTs (Exhibit ~i- The only substantive public comment was presented by David Rowe of the Environmental Defense Fund (who served on the group that drafted the original Proposition 65). Rowe's comments were essentially to the point that the committee members, having reviewed the evidence, have the right to recommend that a chemical be listed if, in their opinion, the evidence "clearly" shows it to be carcinogenic or a reproductive or developmental toxicant. He made the point that the committee should assume that regardless of the criteria established, they can not result in restrictions on their ability to provide independent scientific opinion. With regard to identifying chemicals for consideration for listing, the OEHHA staff provided a list of what it considered..to be the priority substances (Exhibit 6), and asked the committee to chose the 6-8 for which they wished to have synopses prepared. You will notice that E-'I'S is on the list, and that a synopsis was prepared for consideration at this meeting. Under this approach the staff prepares, for

PAGE 2 each substance, a short synopsis of the available data and provides its conclusion as to whether it is a high priority candidate for consideration by the committee. If the committee agrees to consider the substance then the staff will prepare a document wh/ch provides and reviews the available date in • detail The staff provided a very short synopsis to the committee (F_.xhibit 7). As will be seen, it is very brief and directed only at the question of whether ~ can be considered a developmental and/or reproductive to, cant- You will notice under the section tiffed "Available Data" that the staff indicates that the available database for evaluating the devdopmcntal toxidty of ~ is quite e~cnsivc, while .that is not truc for reproductive toxicity. Thcrc is, however, indications that a number of studies have bccn performed on the subject, although there has not been an adequate review of the literature conducted. No reference lists wcrc provided at this meeting for these studies, but wc will attempt to obtain them. In presenting th~s synopsis, the OEaHI-~ staff made a point of the history of the treatment of tobacco smoke and ETS within the DART process (Exhibit 8). Members of the committee were particularly caustic when noting the fact that five years had .c!epscd since the SAP selected ETS as a priority candidate, and only now where they discussing whether it should be formally considered. There was little doubt that the committee would direct that ETS be considered with regard to recommending it for listing as a DART. The only point of issue that was raised was the question of whether respiratory a|lmcnts such as asthma should be cousldcrcd when dtscussmg DART. The question was "are ailments in very small children the result of pro-birth exposure or post-birth exposure?'. The committee was somewhat split, with some members arguing that pro-birth smoking by the mother will continue post-birth, hence one cannot distinguish between them. Others argued that if no distinction is made with this substance, then it wilt require that it be carried to all other substances as well. The committee finally appeared to agree that in the case of ETS, since a child's lungs continue to develop even after birth, post-birth exposure should be considered at least up to the point of maturation. This, however, was not the end of the pro-birth/post-birth argument in that legal issues still remain, namely, does the formal charge to the committee regarding the identification of DART imply only the consideration of pro-birth exposures? The director of OEHI-LA. proposed that the decision on including post-birth exposure in consideration of DART follow, on a chemical-by-chemical basis, accepted scientific opinion. The staff will prepare the review documentation which includes studies considering both pro- and post-birth exposures, thereby giving the committee to review both and come to their own conclusion. The staff will also attempt to get a ruling on the legal issue from the California Attorney General. The committee vote~l~o consider ETS for listing and directed the staff to prepare the full data review for their consideration. The next meeting of the committee will be in approximately sLx months.