Panel Wants Alcohol Put on State Health-Risk List

A scientific advisory panel created to help implement Proposition 65 voted Friday to place alcohol on the state’s list of chemicals known to cause birth defects--a decision likely to lead to alcoholic beverage warnings for consumers.

Despite strong opposition from the beer, wine and liquor industries, the scientific panel appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian decided unanimously to include ethyl alcohol on the list of chemicals covered by the anti-toxics initiative.

In a separate action, the panel voted to add to the list a nitroso compound that is known to cause cancer and is commonly found in such products as bacon, sausage and ham. However, whether warnings to consumers will be required on these products is less clear and will depend on the amount of the chemical they contain.

In all, the panel voted to add 20 chemicals to the list, including the banned pesticide DDT, the widely used chemical ethylene dichloride, and chloroform, which is a byproduct of the chlorination of drinking water. The panel’s actions bring to 80 the number of chemicals known to the state either to cause cancer or birth defects.

For most Californians, the first and most visible effect of Proposition 65 is likely to be the presence late next year of widespread warnings on beverage containers or in liquor stores not to drink alcoholic beverages while pregnant.

“There is substantial evidence from animal studies that alcohol is a reproductive toxicant,” said panel member Andrew Hendrickx in recommending that alcohol be added to the governor’s list. “There is clear-cut evidence of its effects in humans.”

Consumer advocates, who have sought legislation for the last two years to require warnings for alcoholic beverages, applauded the panel’s action and repeated their call for warning labels on the beverage containers themselves.

“The state’s scientific experts have spoken and they have confirmed what we have been trying to tell state legislators for almost two years,” said Consumers Union lobbyist Jim Shultz. “For pregnant women, alcohol is a poison.”

Harmful Effects Cited

According to members of the panel and other medical experts, drinking during pregnancy can cause a variety of deformities, including low birth weight, mental retardation, congenital heart defects, a small-sized head and growth deficiencies.

Hendrickx said evidence shows that between one and three births in every 1,000 are affected by alcohol consumption during pregnancy.

Dr. Kenneth Jones, a professor of medicine at UC San Diego who urged the panel to add alcohol to the state’s list, pointed out that even moderate drinking by pregnant women has been observed to cause birth defects.

“It is the most common environmental cause of mental retardation in this country,” Jones testified. “It is a completely preventable cause of birth defects.”

But Robin Shapiro, an attorney representing the Beer Institute, the Wine Institute and the Distilled Spirits Council, argued that birth defects associated with drinking are caused only by abuse of alcohol.

“Our industry acknowledges that there’s a scientific consensus that abusive chronic drinkers stand a heightened risk of problem pregnancies,” Shapiro told reporters after the decision. “But beyond that, there is no scientific consensus that alcohol poses these problems.”

‘Cheapen the Message’

Shapiro also said that warning labels on beverage containers or warning signs in liquor stores, bars and restaurants would be unnecessary because the public is already aware of the danger. Furthermore, he said, pregnant women should be getting information from their physicians, not from warning notices.

“The labels and warnings sort of cheapen the message,” he said. “A message that appears everywhere, on a package or in a store, is ignored.”

Under Proposition 65, businesses must warn the public of exposure to “significant” amounts of a chemical that causes cancer or birth defects beginning a year after a substance is formally added to the governor’s list. Deukmejian has agreed to abide by the recommendations of the panel.

Twenty months after a substance is listed, businesses are prohibited from discharging unsafe amounts of the chemical into the state’s drinking water supplies--a provision unlikely to apply to alcohol but one with broad implications for other chemicals on the list.

The question of when warnings are required will depend on what level of exposure to a given chemical is determined to be a “significant” amount--a controversial issue that must be decided for each substance.

In the case of alcohol, state officials said warnings are likely because of the evidence of birth defects at relatively low levels of consumption by pregnant women.

For the chemical N-nitrosopyrolidine--found in bacon, sausage and ham--the level of exposure is less clear and officials said it is uncertain whether warnings would be required.

The initiative does not specify what form the warnings must take but requires that they be “clear and reasonable.”

Shultz, the Consumers Union lobbyist, said his group strongly favors warning labels on containers as the most effective method of notifying the public of the danger.

The liquor industry, Shultz contended, can be expected to seek less ubiquitous warnings, such as the signs in liquor stores and bars already required in Los Angeles and San Diego counties.

Now, armed with the scientific panel’s decision, Shultz said that supporters of legislation to require warning labels on all alcoholic beverage containers will try again next week to win approval of the measure, which has been stalled in the Assembly.

Unlike hundreds of other hazardous chemicals, alcohol was not specifically included in the initiative as a chemical that must be placed on the governor’s list.

Case-by-Case Review

Earlier this year, Deukmejian refused to include most of those chemicals specified by the ballot measure, opting instead to appoint the commission to conduct a case-by-case review of the chemicals.

Environmentalist supporters of Proposition 65 won a court order directing the governor to include about 200 additional chemicals on the list. But that order was stayed while the governor appeals it to a higher court.