A Sacramento Superior Court judge has blocked the state from declaring that a chemical widely used in plastic food packaging is a carcinogen.
On Wednesday afternoon, Judge Shelleyanne W.L. Chang affirmed a tentative ruling granting a preliminary injunction on behalf of styrene manufacturers, who sued to keep state environmental regulators from listing styrene as a cancer-causing substance under provisions of Proposition 65. The 1986 initiative seeks to regulate and notify consumers about toxic products.
The judge wrote in her tentative ruling that she agreed with the plaintiff, the Styrene Research and Information Center, that it is likely to prevail in its lawsuit against the state and that “the designation of a product as a carcinogen, particularly one associated with food, could have a devastating effect on that product's use.”
The industry lawsuit was filed in late July against the state and its Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment to block the regulators from listing styrene under Proposition 65. Styrene is used in hundreds of products, including bicycle helmets, plastic food containers and boat parts.
The styrene industry argues there’s not sufficient evidence that styrene causes cancer in humans.
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