CALIFORNIA CANCER LABEL LAW FACES COURT CHALLENGE

 SAN FRANCISCO, California, December 5, 2001 (ENS) - Shampoo manufacturers are  fighting a California law that would require that certain shampoo ingredients be labeled as carcinogens.

 California's Proposition 65, which requires warning labels on products
 containing carcinogens, should be dumped in favor of weaker federal labeling  rules, argue the makers of Tegrin shampoos. Reedco, Inc. is one of about 20  defendants in a lawsuit launched in 1999 by Perry Gottesfeld, executive  director of Occupational Knowledge International (OK International), which  requested labels for dandruff shampoos containing the carcinogen coal tar.

 Lawyers for Reedco, Inc. will seek a summary judgment in a hearing on Friday  in San Francisco Superior Court. The judge will be asked to declare that only  the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has the legal authority to  impose such labels on consumer products.

 In response to a petition filed by Gottesfeld, the FDA acknowledged that coaltar is a human carcinogen, but it has not imposed labeling on the shampoos. However, the California Attorney General has said that companies are obligated  to warn consumers under state law Proposition 65.

 Several of the other shampoo manufacturer defendants in the lawsuit have already paid penalties to settle the suit and are labeling their shampoos or reformulating them.

 The largest of these, American Home Products' Whitehall-Robbins subsidiary, has paid a $427,500 penalty and will reformulate by removing coal tar from its  Denorex products nationwide within weeks.

 But Neutrogena, a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson, is resisting labeling its T/Gel coal-tar shampoos and is fighting the case. The firm was forced to remove coal tar from its shampoos in Europe due to a ban by the European Union, but it has retained the coal tar formula in the U.S.

 "It's ironic that Neutrogena recently published a joint study saying that its
 new, reformulated shampoo without coal tar fights dandruff better than the original coal tar shampoo they still sell here!" says Gottesfeld.

 His case, Gottesfeld vs. Alva-Amco, is scheduled to be heard on January 7, 2002.

 "The bottom line is that it's the public's right to know when a product
 contains a carcinogen which can cause skin and other cancers. We hope the California law is upheld," said Gottesfeld.

 Coal tar, one of the first known human carcinogens, was first linked to cancer in studies published in the 1880s. It was banned by the European Union in 1997 and by Germany in 1995 due to its toxic effects.

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