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Update on Draft Hexavalent Chromium Public Health Goal

The Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) is required, under existing statute (SB 351, Ortiz, Chapter 602, Statutes of 2001), to develop a Public Health Goal (PHG) for chromium 6, also known as hexavalent chromium. The Department of Health Services (DHS) will use the PHG as the health basis to develop a regulatory Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for chromium 6.

The University of California has completed an external scientific peer review of a pre-release draft of OEHHA’s chromium 6 PHG assessment. The peer reviewers were Dr. Leonard Bjeldanes, Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology, UC Berkeley; Dr. Roberto Gwiazda, Environmental Toxicology, UC Santa Cruz; and Dr. Michael Kelner, Department of Pathology, UC San Diego. OEHHA is revising its draft assessment based on the peer review comments. Upon completion of these revisions, OEHHA will release the draft for public review and comment, and will schedule a public workshop. OEHHA expects to release the draft document in fall 2005.

OEHHA considered both cancer and noncancer data in developing the pre-release draft PHG. There are insufficient data to reliably calculate a PHG based on a cancer study. Therefore, the draft PHG will be based on a noncancer endpoint.

The National Toxicology Program (NTP) currently is conducting a major toxicological study to help determine whether chromium 6 causes cancer when ingested. OEHHA and DHS were among the entities that petitioned NTP to undertake this study. OEHHA will review data from the NTP study when it becomes available and will make any necessary revisions to the PHG. In the meantime, OEHHA will finalize the public-review draft of the PHG based on noncancer health effects and proceed with the public review process.

Because OEHHA considers the pre-release draft a “pre-decisional” document, and it is undergoing revision, it is not being made available for distribution. However, OEHHA is releasing the external peer reviews of that document.