Suits Target Cancer Risk of Paint Stripper
Succumbing to pressure from environmental lawsuits, several manufacturers are removing a cancer-causing chemical from paint strippers sold in California, the Environmental Defense Fund announced Tuesday.
The national group has been targeting products that contain the chemical methylene chloride--also called dichloromethane--widely used in paint strippers, varnish removers, brush cleaners and other products.
In a series of lawsuits brought under Proposition 65, the 1986 anti-toxics initiative, the fund’s attorneys have won orders forcing three companies--Savogran Co., Sunnyside Corp. and Star Bronze Co.--to warn customers of the potential cancer risk of the chemical or to stop distributing the products in California.
Other manufacturers facing the threat of suit--including Ace Hardware and Tru-Test Manufacturing--have settled the matter by agreeing to remove the chemical from their products.
Environmental Defense Fund attorney David Roe said the labeling requirements of Proposition 65 are, in effect, forcing manufacturers to remove methylene chloride and to market alternative products.
Roe contended that products containing the chemical are the most potent cancer-causing agents still commercially available.
“It’s basically cancer in a can,” he said.
Homeowners using methylene chloride-containing paint removers are exposed to levels of the chemical up to 180,000 times the level that would require a warning, according to lawyers for the environmental group.
“We want marketplace pressure to push this toxic risk off the shelf and we’re well on our way in California,” said Roe, one of the authors of Proposition 65.
Methylene chloride is a widely used industrial solvent as well as the principal active ingredient in many off-the-shelf paint strippers.
Paint removers account for almost a fourth of the substance manufactured in the United States--23% of the estimated 621 million pounds produced in 1987, according to the latest National Toxicology Program report on carcinogens.
The chemical is known to cause liver and breast cancer in laboratory animals, and a Proposition 65 scientific advisory panel has placed the substance on the list of chemicals known to the state to cause cancer.
Proposition 65 requires manufacturers to warn consumers of the risks of products that could cause cancer or birth defects. Companies that fail to properly label their products are subject to citizen suits as well as action by local prosecutors and the state attorney general. The Environmental Defense Fund and other environmental groups have been using the citizen-suit provision to force risky products off the market.
