Plaintiffs have begun serving Proposition 65 notices of violation alleging unwarned exposures to furfuryl alcohol (FFA). Like acrylamide, which has been the subject of significant Proposition 65 litigation already, FFA is present in a wide variety of foods and flavorings and forms as a byproduct of cooking.
California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) added FFA to the list of chemicals subject to Proposition 65 on September 30, 2016. The OEHHA listing was based on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2014 finding of likely human carcinogenicity because “furfuryl alcohol causes increased incidences of rare malignant nasal tumors in male rats, and rare malignant and combined malignant and benign kidney tumors in male mice.” Companies became presumptively obligated to provide Proposition 65 cancer warnings for exposures to FFA at the start of the fourth quarter of 2017. In addition to its industrial applications, FFA can be found in various foods and flavorings.