The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 is better known as California’s Proposition 65. The goal of California’s Proposition 65 is to protect drinking water sources from toxic substances that may cause cancer and birth defects and to reduce or eliminate exposures to those chemicals generally by requiring warnings in advance of those exposures.

Proposition 65 requires the State of California to publish a list of chemicals known to cause cancer or birth defects or other reproductive harm; the list must be updated at least once a year. Since 1987, the list has steadily grown to include approximately 800 chemicals, the most recent update was issued in December 2015.
Under California’s Proposition 65, Californians must be notified whenever a significant amount of chemicals turns out to be present in the products they purchase, in their homes or workplaces, or that are released into the environment.
The purpose of this notification is to make sure that California residents are informed of the potential products they use and help protect themselves from exposure to chemicals listed in Proposition 65.

A Los Angeles Times article from November 2009, by Brendan Borrell, indicated that California’s Prop 65 has worked much like a double edged sword for the residents of the state. Some opponents have stated that the law has exaggerated a particular class of long-term theoretical risks related to cancer and reproductive health and makes it harder for people to make reasonable choices. Advocates believe the law has helped residents improve their health by keeping them informed.

Environmental experts believe that it is beneficial to issue a warning well before a person reaches a harmful threshold. Whatever one may think about the law, Prop 65 has affected many manufacturers across all industries and states.

 

 

For a metal closure manufacturing company such as Tecnocap, California Proposition 65  the mayor point of interest are the coatings used on the tinplate. As reported on the California’s Office for Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, “Effective May 11, 2015, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) added Bisphenol A (BPA) (CAS No. 80-05-7) to the list of chemicals known to the state to cause reproductive toxicity for purposes of the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 (Proposition 65).”

Although shipments of Tecnocap closures are sent throughout the country, Tecnocap is asked by many distributors to comply with Proposition 65. Dozens of products, which are manufactured and packed outside of California, will ship to California stores for public usage.

Recently, media and government agencies have focused their attention in particular on the BPA.

Based on most studies, humans are mostly exposed to BPA through sources such as food packaging, the epoxy lining of metal food, beverage cans and plastic bottles. Due to growing concerns in the recent years, Tecnocap has found suppliers that employ Polyester BPA-NI coatings. BPA-NI simply means Bisphenol A non-intent or with no BPA intentionally added. The interior coating supplied by Metlac provides a BPA-NI product which complies with California Proposition 65.