Deukmejian Rejected Broad ‘Ethical’ View on Listing of Toxics

State health experts argued unsuccessfully this winter that Gov. George Deukmejian was “scientifically and ethically required” to apply Proposition 65 to about 250 chemicals shown to cause cancer in animals, rather than a short list proven to produce cancer in humans, according to an Administration memo made public Monday.

The strongly worded document, which Deukmejian Administration officials referred to as “the ethical memo,” was dated Jan. 22. Several days later an attorney for the state Department of Health Services contended in a separate memo that the governor was legally required only to list substances known to cause cancer in humans.

Late last month, the Deukmejian Administration accepted the advice of the attorney, rather than the health experts, and the governor issued a list of 29 chemicals initially covered by Proposition 65. It was a decision that had been advocated by agricultural and industrial interests, among others.

Proposition 65, the anti-toxics initiative on the November ballot, was opposed by the governor but approved overwhelmingly by the voters. Under the act, businesses by next March must warn the public of exposures to chemicals on the governor’s list. And by November, 1988, businesses will be barred from releasing significant amounts of these toxics into drinking water supplies.

The memo from the health experts was made available to The Times on Monday after a state Senate committee hearing, in which lawmakers scoffed at the governor’s short list and criticized the Administration for ignoring the advice of its own scientists.

However, Deputy Health and Welfare Secretary Thomas E. Warriner, who is in charge of implementing Proposition 65, defended the Administration’s position--arguing that the governor was legally required by March 1 to list only chemicals known to cause cancer or reproductive effects in humans.

He said that the decision on which chemicals should be added will be left to a 12-member panel of scientific experts appointed by Deukmejian on Feb. 27--the same day he issued the list of 29 chemicals.

“The governor is not a scientist,” Warriner said in an interview.

Warriner said that he asked Department of Health Services staff to produce a memo on the scientific basis for listing cancer-causing chemicals.

The result was a statement of the department’s view by scientist Steven A. Book, who was then acting chief of the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

Last month Book was named executive secretary to the scientific panel that will decide which chemicals, if any, to add to the governor’s initial list.

In the memo, Book wrote: “The use of animal data in predicting human toxicity (including carcinogenicity) to drugs, pesticides, food additives and environmental contaminants is so well established that the Department of Health Services cannot ignore the many historical examples.”

He made it clear that his department did not accept the idea that “only known human carcinogens” should be considered the “known carcinogens” covered by Proposition 65.

“From its perspective, the Department of Health Services does not believe human exposures to known animal carcinogens to be in the best interest of the public health,” Book wrote.

The department recommended that the Administration include more than 250 chemicals on the initial list of chemicals known to cause cancer--essentially all those named by the International Assn. for Research and Cancer or the National Toxicology Program, Book concluded.

The authors of Proposition 65 have taken Deukmejian to court in an effort to force him to list all the chemicals identified by the two scientific groups along with other substances identified as causing cancer or birth defects by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration or the Environmental Protection Agency.

‘Candidates’ Listed

Warriner said that he briefed the governor and that Deukmejian never saw Book’s memo. However, Deukmejian did identify 202 “candidate” chemicals that the scientific panel will review over the next year. Those substances included all the ones that Book and other department scientists wanted, but that were left off Deukmejian’s initial list, Warriner said.

Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles), who chaired the hearing, and other legislators pressed Administration representatives on how such notorious chemicals as ethylene dibromide (or EDB) could be left off the list when there was strong animal evidence that they caused cancer.

A common sense reading of the ballot initiative, Torres said, required such substances to be included “because most of the evidence on most of the carcinogens that are well known to the scientific community to be mutagens, to be reproductive toxins, to be carcinogens are based on animal tests.”

Torres also complained that the Administration failed to ask Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp for a legal opinion on the requirements of the initiative, while relying instead on the opinion of a Department of Health Services attorney.

Targeted in Lawsuit

Van de Kamp has refused to represent Deukmejian in the suit filed against him by the AFL-CIO and a number of environmental groups that supported the initiative.

In their testimony, both Warriner and Book said that they referred to Book’s written statement as “the ethical memo”--a reference, Warriner said, to Book’s view that under Proposition 65 the state had an obligation to inform the public of the likelihood of danger from chemicals shown to cause cancer in animals.

Warriner argued that by publishing a list of “candidate chemicals” and promising a scientific review of all of them in the next year, the Administration had responded to the memo.