California bans polycarbonate manufacture-starting material

Bisphenol A is primarily used to make plastics and is officially relisted as a potentially-hazardous chical which requires a warning label to comply with California Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcent Act.
The state took that new action notwithstanding the continued existence of a lawsuit brought by the American Chistry Council and others to enjoin the state’s first attpt to list BpA.
The chical is of note to mbers of the optical industry because it is used as a starting material in the manufacture of polycarbonate, used in manufacture of lenses.
The Prop 65 warning requirent for BpA takes effect one year after the chical is added to the list, so companies will now have until 11 May 2016 to determine if their products sold in California contain BpA, or if their California work places will expose ployees to BpA.
The Vision Council is in the process of reviewing the new listing, especially to determine whether or not the state is providing a safe harbor level for BpA.??
Chical exposures above the safe harbor level trigger a Prop 65 warning, and when the state first added BpA to its list – which action led to the law suit above – a safe harbour level was provided, and that level was above the level in which most people would encounter in a product.?? The Vision Council believes that a similar safe harbour level would benefit its mbers and other mbers of the optical industry.
Proposition 65 has been a California state law since 1986. Passed as the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcent Act, Prop 65, as it is commonly known, regulates the presence of certain chical substances found in products sold in California, or present in the workplace in California. The goals of Prop 65 are to protect California’s drinking water sources from contamination by those chicals and to allow California consumers, residents and workers the information necessary to make informed choices so they can take precautions about the products they purchase or exposures they might receive to potentially hazardous chicals.
If a business sells in California a product containing a substance or substances that are on the Prop 65 list in excess of the de minimis level for that substance, then a “clear and reasonable” warning must be provided to the public. The same is true for environmental or workplace exposures to Prop 65 substances in California.