Document 79EnK3zmkD7eprnkDRZ2wZyo

line of winneren candidates lure delegates iioci. Congresstmocrais. who ; special intert roles. Worse, to pnmanesi lost commit.ly liberal or or both, ss - and we in 198V Mr. Independent arty can go all without having r parts of the ivention domit of the Demo)m cites a 1984 than twice as > as rank-anduc increase, lary campaign fates feel they y liberal mesicts even fewer ssthe South on tays. exit polls ratlc primary themselves as /ho identified umped by as >ints this year Democrats in vote this year jues that it is swing voters" order to win in eople, he says, an in 1980 and Democrats in of the primary rom still isn't rge Bush. He le on the econand he thinks nade progress 4ondale's mis>eciaJ pleader, s just no hope >n," he says, ible. . . . He's more growthig government tkis's left-wing course, which ibstituting the Doctrine, and dear weapons, blem, but like this week he solution-Sen. 'There'd be a ned Nunn," he course, is that cry of protest erests, and esickson. To us may have the it MK Jackson t^amorma Law nas a joum-m ruaijl uajlu m By Davih Rih: in n remarkable experiment. Califor nians are using the power ol the market place to reduce their exposure to toxic chemicals. lip to now the demands of a treo-markei economy, whether for shinier apples or longer shelf life or no-knock gasoline, have been assumed io press in favor of chemi cals entering our environment: "Better liv ing through chemisiry." as the old market ing slogan goes. The risk that some of the chemicals would be unacceptably toxic was a problem assigned io governmeni regulators, who could succeed only by swimming against the economic tide. But a month ago. a new California law began to reverse that tide. For a list of particularly dangerous chemicals I those officially known to the state to cause can cer or reproductive toxicity), it creates a market incentive for businesses to make sure they keep exposures below the level that would pose any significant risk to health. (For carcinogens, the state has es tablished that threshold at the level that would produce one excess cancer per 100.000 exposures, based on standard Environ mental Protection Agency methodology.) The incentive is simple. A business that Intentionally exposes people to one of the listed chemicals, and doesn't keep the ex posure below that chemical's authorized level, must warn the people exposed. Ex cess exposures are still legal, but the warning must be included along with the chemical dose. Competition therefore presses in favor of keeping exposure levels down. If one company's product sits on the shelf with a cancer warning and a com petitor's doesn't, it's not hard to foresee which one a consumer will choose. The new law. a popular initiative known as Proposition 65. was overwhelmingly ap proved by California's voters in Novem ber 1986. Gov. George Deukmejian issued a list of chemicals that was much shorter than expected land that he has since ex panded following a lawsuiti, but that con tained important carcinogens such as ben zene and vinyl chloride, and important re productive toxins such as lead. Businesses have had a year's grace period to look over how they expose people to those chemicals and to decide, when necessary, whether to reduce the exposures or to warn. Instead of trying to resist the incentives that animate private business enterprise, making use of those incentives is at the Notable & Quotable Anatole Kalestsky of London's Fi nancial Times, in its April 6 edition: The crumbling of nearly 10% of the U.S. banking system, followed by creeping na tionalisation, has been one of the most par adoxical legacies of the Reagan era. The chances are that, like the Third World debt crisis, the-domestic-hanking debacle -will be a time bomb that ticks alarmingly and loudly, but never quite goes off. hriiri of Proposition 65$ approach. And the tion 65 s changes has been felt. Hi incentives for business not only in the mar few business leaders are thought! ketplace. but also in the regulatory process sidenng the implications of a sy, are consciously addressed. which the incentives are for d For example, the question of "how rather than quarreling, one in which niueh is mo much" of a specific toxic mate on toxic chemical controls is not in chemical is one that has bedeviled regula evitable. Chevron's Chairman George tory agencies since ihe beginning of mod Keller suggested in a recent public speech em toxics law. Even after a chemical is that in the post-Proposition 65 era it might absolutely confirmed to cause cancer, be in industry's interest to take the initia based on laboratory or workplace doses, tive in rontrolling toxics problems, in ad there is extensive debate over the danger vance of legal strictures, and that the tra of smaller dnses. and where or whether to ditional attitude of merely complying with draw a line belween amounts worth worry regulations once written might be obsolete. ing about and amounts that can more or In private, he and others have begun ex less be safely ignored. ploring ways to reach consensus on the Under the typical toxics control law, longstanding scientific disputes over toxic governmeni scientists and regulators have ity and risk assessment. If the stalemate is the job of deciding where to draw the line broken, in other words, ii may be better to for each chemical; and until the line is lead than to follow. drawn, in effect, ihe law is not in force. The typical system thus creates a perfectly rational Incentive to continue the debate for as long as possible and to offer the government line-drawers a minimum of help, either scientific or political. It is no wonder that the "how much is too much" question can take decades to answer, even for a single chemical. In the meantime, as the debate goes on, the public continues to be exposed to known toxins in amounts of undetermined safety or harm. Because of the way Proposition 65 is It is too early to say what the outcome of California's experiment will be. Re sponse to the new incentives is only start ing, on all sides; the noise level is still high; and the law's second half restricting discharges of the same chemicals into drinking-water sources has yet to go into effect. But if all sides discover self-interest in moving toward effective control of the toxics problem, instead of slicking grimly to their familiar trenches, the results will be as remarkable as the law itself. structured, however, private industry for the first time has a strong incentive to get the "too much" concept turned into pre cise numbers, for each chemical involved. The burden of proof has been shifted onto Mr. Roe is a senior attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund and a co-au thor of Proposition 65. producers or sellers to show that their THE WALL STREET JOURNALproducts or activities do not exceed the "no-significant-risk" level. It is very much in their interests, therefore, to have Warrtn H. PUUlpa that level precisely defined. As as result. Chairman. ChiefEjmtwt RaySkaw Prtndtnt California's regulators have answered the "how much is too much" question for more chemicals in the past 12 months than the EPA has managed to address under the Peter R. Kui Esmtwt Viet Prttident/Amoeiait Puttuher Normal huWM htonoyint Editor Robert L Bartley Editor federal Toxic Substances Control Act in the past 12 years. The acceleration in the tran sition from scientific information to mean ingful law has been dramatic. Understandably, a law with such poten tial to change the status quo has been PaalE-Swiftr Deputy Maaafiaf Editor Barnard T. Flanafaa Viet PmUtntlMvkitini Dorothea Caccoli Palako Viet Prtmdnl/Cimiatwn Caorf* MeUoan Deputy Editor. Editorial Poft Prank C. Bra*** III Viet Pmidtnt/ Operation! highly controversial. The incentives would not work, opponents have strenuously ar gued throughout the past year: The state's regulators would never be able to come up with the desired "how much is too much" numbers in time. (By the time the law went into effect at the end of Februaiy, regulators went beyond the initial request list of 29 chemicals by setting numbers for PvbUabod aloe* IMS by DOW jONES & COMPANY, INC. Editorial and Corporate Headqaartera: MS Ukarty Strati. New Yaei, N.Y. ItUl. TetepbooeflllKIMm Warrta H. Phillip*. Chairman; Ray BJvaw, Prtmdtnl; WBUaai L. Dana. Petar R. Kami, Executive Viet Prttidtnli; Kenneth U Burtafa, fr--r K- Ottaway Jr* Senior Viet PmidnU 31.) There would be massive overwarn ings. with labels on every Item in the su permarket instead ol only on the few prod ucts actually presenting a significant risk and exceeding the law's standard. (Underwarning rather than overwamlng now seems to be the problem, and so far there appear tobe no labels in supermarkets at all. That will change as regulations on Vke Piaaiiaata: Prank C. Braeta ttl. Operation* Donald L Mike. Employee Attahon* Kevin t. Roche. Finance, Peter C. Skinner, Corporal* Central Courier/. Stetiiai E. Soderiind. Hanning, Carl M. Valenti, Information Sender* Aaaadat* Ediiora: Edward R. Cany, Laurence C. ODonnaB. Midwoot Newa and Sale* Offleet 1 Saotk Wackar Drtva, Ckleafo. OUaaia 00*0* Tatepbaae (1U) fM-4SM warning are issued In final form, and as' -SUBSUMPINJM AND ADDRESS CHANOBS case-by-case interpretation-begins:) ~ AwUkmi aTWKiltma limit W kwea Reed. Chkopa*. Meat. SIMA (MtueM lad aew Strong corporate resistance to Proposi iddnea far nalocrlptiaa fatal aae fata t 0 i PLAINTIFF'S EXHIBIT CIIR-224