The California Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) is proposing to add three fire retardant chemicals (tetrabromobisphenol A; N,N-dimethylformamide; and 2-mercaptobenzothiazole) to the list of chemicals of concern in the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986(Proposition 65).  

The OEHHA's move to add these three chemicals to the Proposition 65 list is in response to research findings by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) which found that these chemicals are ‘probably carcinogenic to humans’. In their 2016 review of available data, the IARC ruled that: 

"N,N‑dimethylformamide, 2 mercaptobenzothiazole, and tetrabromobisphenol A are classified in Group 2A (“probably carcinogenic to humans”), and that there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in animals for N,N-dimethylformamide, 2 mercaptobenzothiazole, and tetrabromobisphenol A".