Second Workshop on Added Nutrients Scheduled in California

California EPA’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) has scheduled a workshop for December 12, 2008, to discuss
possible regulatory language that would apply to foods or crops with added nutrients that exceed levels considered safe under Proposition 65.
According to OEHHA’s notice, “this set of regulations, if adopted, will only apply to chemicals that are already on the Proposition 65 list, or that are added to the list in the future. The exposure level established in these potential regulations for a listed chemical would not limit the amount of the chemical that can be added to any particular product and would not restrict the sale or availability of any food product or supplement. Instead, these levels could be used by businesses subject to the [Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement] Act to determine
when a warning is required for an exposure to the listed chemicals in question in a food product.”

Written comments may be submitted until January 5, 2009. OEHHA notes that significant changes to its regulatory proposal occurred after an April 2008 pre-regulatory workshop. Following review of the comments, the agency decided that “the levels established in the regulations for individual chemicals will be based on a chemical-by-chemical evaluation, rather than by relying on a Recommended Dietary Allowance
(RDA) or a percentage of the Tolerable Upper Intake Level for a given chemical. Another change is that rather than proposing one regulatory concept that would cover both human and plant nutrients, OEHHA is proposing separate concepts for exposure to human nutrients in food and for exposures to plant nutrients in food.”