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by Tracy Fernandez Rysavy
We give you labels to look for, links to less toxic options, and a special recipe for making your own supplies at home.
If life were fair, taking time out to indulge your creative side through art would be a naturally green endeavor. You could paint a mural, mosaic a table, or take your children to a pottery shop without a single worry.
But this is the real world, and in it, paints, glues, glazes, and even markers can pose hidden health hazards that we should be aware of. Exposure to the toxic chemicals found in some art supplies can result in problems including headaches; nausea; burns; breathing problems; lung and kidney damage; and even cancer, says Healthy Child Healthy World (formerly the Children's Health and Environmental Coalition).
Children are particularly vulnerable to toxins because of their small size, higher metabolisms, and immature immune systems, so it pays to exercise extra care with the products they use.
The good news (and yes, there is some!) is that it's easier than ever to find greener, safer alternatives to hazardous art supplies.
Labels to Look For
All art supplies sold in the US must bear the phrase, "conforms to ASTM D 4236," confirming that they have been properly labeled for chronic health hazards, in accordance with the federal Labeling Hazardous Art Materials Act (LHAMA). Under LHAMA, art supplies must contain warnings if they cause acute hazards-such as "harmful or fatal if swallowed" or "may cause skin irritation"- as well as warnings if they could cause chronic health effects, such as cancer, sterility, blindness, birth defects, or allergic reactions.
However, LHAMA does not mandate that manufacturers provide consumers with an ingredients list, so the substances in many art supplies are often kept from consumers. (Art material formulas are always available to treating physicians through poison control centers.) A Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) toxicologist evaluates all US art products for compliance with LHAMA at least every five years and whenever a product's formula is changed.
To go even further when it comes to art materials and safety, also look for labels from the Art and Creative Materials Institute (ACMI). ACMI is a nonprofit membership organization made up of art supply manufacturers, who voluntarily agree to have their materials evaluated by independent toxicologists and tested by accredited, independent labs for safety every five years, as well as randomly and whenever product formulas change.
"Our lead toxicologist, Dr. Woodhall Stopford of Duke University, evaluates every color formulation of every product, and he must approve every formula change," says Deborah Fanning, ACMI's executive vice president. "He looks at everything as though it were going to be used by a one-year-old."
Any art material evaluated by ACMI will bear one of the organization's seals. The AP (approved product) label appears on all supplies evaluated as nontoxic to both children and adults. Some older products may have a CP (certified product) or "nontoxic" HL (health label) seal instead of an AP label.
If a product contains potentially harmful ingredients, ACMI will mandate a CL label (caution label). Older products may have a "cautions required" HL label instead. No material with these labels is appropriate for children.
In 2000, ACMI's safety protocols came under fire when the Seattle Post-Intelligencer broke the news that carcinogenic asbestos had been found in Crayola, Prang, and Rose Art crayons, all of which bear the nontoxic AP label. While asbestos was not an actual ingredient in any of the three brands, it is a common contaminant of talc, which had long been used as a strengthener in crayons. (Later that year, all three manufacturers agreed to stop using talc in crayons.)
Fanning says ACMI responded immediately, conducting its own testing, and the CPSC tested the three brands as well. None found asbestos.
"What we and the CPSC did find were talc fibers and cleavage fragments, which are too short to be asbestos but are often misinterpreted by some labs as asbestos," says Fanning. "Had we found asbestiform contaminants at a hazardous level, we would have taken our AP labels off immediately, and the manufacturers would have had to take their crayons off the market until they complied with our standards again."
Fanning says that ACMI's evaluations prohibit AP-labeled products from containing chemicals at or above California's Proposition 65 level. Prop. 65 is widely considered one of the most conservative lists of known carcinogens and reproductive toxins in the country. AP-labeled products also avoid toxic levels of known or potentially harmful chemicals as classified by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Institute of Health, and other agencies.
One thing to note is that the AP and CP labels do not indicate that a product is completely free of toxins-rather, that it contains no toxins "in sufficient quantities to be toxic or injurious to humans."
As an example of how that might pose a problem to the most cautious of us, Healthy Child Healthy World states that though polymer clays are labeled nontoxic by ACMI, they are made of polyvinyl chlorides (PVC) softened with phthalates. Phthalates have been linked to reproductive and organ damage, and manufacturing or burning PVC creates dioxin, a potent carcinogen. ACMI continues to label polymer clays with the AP label, says Fanning, because "the amount of phthalates in them is too small to cause harm, and the clays would not be expected to release hazardous materials unless burned." Healthy Child Healthy World counters that children are subject to multiple exposures of phthalates from different sources every day, and no one knows what the cumulative effect of such exposure is.
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