People of the State of California v. McWane, Inc. (dba AB&I) — Complaint for Injunctive Relief and Civil Penalties (Prop 65 hexavalent chromium air emissions, AB&I Foundry, East Oakland)

Overview

This 11-page civil complaint, filed on 15 February 2022 by California Attorney General Rob Bonta in Alameda County Superior Court, alleges that McWane, Inc. (operating in East Oakland under the fictitious business name AB&I) has violated California Proposition 65, the Unfair Competition Law, and Government Code § 12607 by emitting hexavalent chromium from its cast-iron pipe foundry without providing the clear and reasonable warning required by Health & Safety Code § 25249.6 to nearby residents, schoolchildren, and workers. The complaint quantifies facility-wide hexavalent chromium (Cr-VI) emissions at 1.41 pounds per year (1.17 lb/yr from pipe casting and 0.13 lb/yr from molding operations) from the April 2021 BAAQMD draft Health Risk Assessment, identifies AB&I as the largest Cr-VI emitter in Alameda County and one of the top ten in the nine-county BAAQMD region, and references the BAAQMD HRA’s estimate of 22-in-a-million resident cancer risk attributable to the facility. The Prop 65 No Significant Risk Level for Cr-VI is the second-lowest NSRL set by OEHHA for any listed carcinogen (only dioxin is lower), at 0.001 µg/day.

Key numbers

Hexavalent chromium emission rates from AB&I Foundry — ¶ 31 (page 8), citing BAAQMD draft April 2021 Health Risk Assessment

The complaint describes the pipe-casting machines as the largest contributing source within the facility and notes that they have no emission controls, with emissions released directly to the atmosphere through roof vents.

BAAQMD draft Health Risk Assessment quantification — ¶ 31 (page 8)

California Proposition 65 Cr-VI regulatory framework — ¶¶ 20–22 (pages 5–6)

Demographic and exposure context — ¶ 2 (page 2) and ¶ 32 (page 8), citing CalEnviroScreen 4.0

Procedural and statutory facts — ¶¶ 5–13 (pages 2–4), ¶ 33 (page 8), and the Prayer for Relief (page 11)

Methods (brief)

This is a civil enforcement complaint, not a primary analytical study. The substantive numerical facts the complaint relies on derive from secondary regulatory documents that are referenced but not attached:

• BAAQMD draft Health Risk Assessment (April 2021) is the source of the per-source emission rates (pipe-casting machines 1.17 lb/yr, molding 0.13 lb/yr, facility 1.41 lb/yr) and the 22-in-a-million resident cancer-risk estimate. The complaint does not reproduce the HRA’s underlying ambient-monitoring or stack-test methodology, exposure-pathway modelling, source-receptor relationships, or risk-assessment assumptions; it cites the HRA’s headline numbers descriptively at ¶ 31.
• OEHHA Prop 65 Cr-VI NSRL of 0.001 µg/day is cited per Cal. Code Regs., tit. 27, § 25705, subd. (b). The complaint does not reproduce the OEHHA derivation methodology for the NSRL (the underlying cancer slope factor, the unit-risk inhalation-route calculation, or the “no significant risk” 10⁻⁵ lifetime-cancer-risk assumption Prop 65 uses to back-calculate the safe-harbor daily dose).
• CalEnviroScreen 4.0 ranking for the East Oakland census tract is cited via a URL footnote to oehha.ca.gov/calenviroscreen/report/calenviroscreen-40; the complaint does not reproduce the underlying pollution-burden and population-characteristics composite-index methodology.
• AB&I rank among Alameda County and BAAQMD Cr-VI emitters (¶ 29) is asserted without an explicit ranked-list citation, but is consistent with publicly-reported BAAQMD facility-level emissions inventories.

The complaint itself contains no original ambient-air or stack-emission measurements, no analytical-method statements, and no laboratory-instrument detail. Its evidentiary register is the AG’s pleading-stage characterisation of the regulatory record assembled by BAAQMD and OEHHA.

Implications

• Regulatory baseline (US-CA, hexavalent chromium under Proposition 65, 2022). The complaint documents the operative California regulatory framework for Cr-VI as of February 2022: dual Prop 65 listings (cancer, 27 February 1987; developmental and reproductive toxicity, 19 December 2008) and the NSRL of 0.001 µg/day under Cal. Code Regs., tit. 27, § 25705, subd. (b). The NSRL is the second-lowest set by OEHHA for any listed carcinogen, with only dioxin lower. For HMI work on the Chromium, Hexavalent page’s regulatory-limits section and on any future California Proposition 65 — Hexavalent Chromium Listing and Safe-Harbor Levels regulation page (not yet created in the linked reference record), this complaint is a date-anchored primary record of the operative California NSRL value and listing dates as the California AG’s office relied on them in active enforcement litigation.

• Regulatory baseline (US-CA, Prop 65 environmental-exposure enforcement against industrial stationary sources, 2022). The complaint is a primary record of how the California AG operationalises Proposition 65 against industrial stationary-source emissions (as distinct from consumer-product warnings, which dominate the Prop 65 enforcement landscape). The framework invoked: environmental-exposure warnings must be “provided in a conspicuous manner… likely to be seen, read, and understood by an ordinary individual in the course of normal daily activity” (Cal. Code Regs., tit. 27, § 25601, subd. (d)), with the operative form of warning being “a notice mailed, sent electronically, or otherwise delivered to each occupant in the affected area,” clearly identifying the source, including a map of the affected area, provided at least every three months, and provided in English and any other language ordinarily used by the facility to communicate with the public (id. at § 25604, subd. (a)(2)). This is the regulatory analog, on the environmental-exposure side, to the consumer-product on-label warning regime that anchors most Prop 65 enforcement in the HMI corpus. The same Cr-VI NSRL of 0.001 µg/day applies regardless of exposure route.

• Regulatory baseline (US-CA, Cr-VI inhalation carcinogenic potency framing). The complaint’s characterisation of Cr-VI as “5,000 times more potent than benzene” as an inhalation carcinogen (¶ 3) anchors the comparative-potency framing the AG’s office uses to justify the unusually low Cr-VI NSRL. For HMI work on the Chromium, Hexavalent page’s toxicology section, this is a useful comparative anchor against the better-known benzene unit-risk literature. The complaint does not cite the underlying inhalation-unit-risk values for either chemical.

• Environmental-justice context. The complaint is explicit that the enforcement target is an industrial source in a census tract that ranks adversely affected by pollution beyond 91% of California, has the highest asthma-related emergency-department visit rate in the state, is 85% below the poverty line, and is 66% Latinx and 21% African American. This is relevant to any HMI synthesis work on the disproportionate-exposure framing the Prop 65 regulatory regime is designed to address; the operative legal mechanism (warning-based, not limit-based, for environmental exposures) and its practical implications for facility-line communities are documented here in primary form.

• Out of HMI food-and-supply-chain scope. The complaint addresses ambient-air Cr-VI emissions from a cast-iron pipe foundry, not food contamination or food-supply-chain exposure. The substantive evidence does not contribute to ingredient contamination_profile data, product-page Literature Evidence Summary tables, or any HMTc-program threshold-setting workflow on the food side. Its value to the corpus is as a regulatory-framework primary source for the California Prop 65 Cr-VI NSRL and for the operational mechanics of California’s industrial-stationary-source environmental-exposure warning regime.

• App. Not relevant to ingredient-level contamination-profile data. Potentially relevant to a future regulatory-overview surface that surfaces the per-jurisdiction Cr-VI regulatory framework (Prop 65 NSRL, listing dates, warning mechanics) to brand-QA and regulatory-affairs users.

• Courses. Useful as a primary-source example for a regulatory-history module covering the application of Proposition 65 to industrial stationary-source emissions (as distinct from consumer-product warnings) and for an environmental-justice module covering how California’s pollution-burden composite indices (CalEnviroScreen) are operationalised in AG enforcement pleadings.

Related evidence

• Arsenic (inorganic Arsenic Compounds) — Proposition 65 Chemical Listing
• Evidence on the Developmental and Reproductive Toxicity of Cadmium
• California Proposition 65 Compliance Requirements
• Lead and Lead Compounds — Proposition 65 Chemical Listing
• California Proposition 65 — Inorganic Arsenic Compounds Listing
• California Proposition 65 — Cadmium Listing and Maximum Allowable Daily Level
• California Proposition 65 — Lead and Lead Compounds Listing

Update history

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