The Natural Products Association (NPA) has submitted comments to the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) on Naturally Occurring Concentrations of Arsenic in Rice and Lead in Some Foods. NPA supports the exclusion of chemical amounts in the naturally occurring exemption that have been shown to occur naturally in foods if it could be demonstrated their presence was not due to “human activity.” NPA pointed out several scientific errors and poor assumptions on how OEHHA is proposing to calculate the fraction of contaminants attributable to naturally occurring sources.
 
“The proposed regulations would do nothing to prevent frivolous lawsuits by professional plaintiff bounty hunters and may actually increase them,” said Dan Fabricant, PhD, CEO and executive director of NPA. “The justifications provided by OEHHA are not based on sound science and would do little to protect consumers. Rather, it continues down the same old path to more pre-litigation notices and lawsuits over commonly encountered contaminants in foods. California continues to place the burden of proof on businesses over regulatory enforcers regarding chemicals that are considered safe at the federal level.”
 
NPA also urged OEHHA to work with FDA to ensure warnings and exposure limits are based upon general principles of regulatory toxicology as well as federal and state regulatory authorities for food. NPA pointed out that California’s limits from exposure for common contaminants like lead, cadmium, arsenic and mercury are typically lower than the FDA’s provisional total tolerability intake levels established for contaminants in food.
 
NPA supports statements made by Governor Jerry Brown (D-CA) to “revamp Proposition 65 by ending frivolous ‘shake-down’ lawsuits, improving how the public is warned about dangerous chemicals and strengthening the scientific basis for warning levels.”  
 
To view the initial OEHHA post click Here and to view NPA comments click Here.