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CAMILA IN TEXAS ASKS:
My tween is a budding artist. Her bedroom is full of watercolor pencils, acrylic paints, art pastels, and countless fancy marker sets. Should I be worried about toxic chemical exposure from her art supplies? Are there safer arts and crafts alternatives that are still high quality?
MOM DETECTIVE ANSWERS:
As a mom of two artists, 13 and 20, I’m cheering this question on, Camila. I believe strongly in the power of creating art—from first crayon scribbles to the oil paintings my older daughter now churns out in college. There have been plenty of studies about the many benefits of making art: it creates focus, keeps brains active, and helps with problem-solving skills. But mostly it’s fun, pretty, engaging, and uniquely therapeutic. So it’s terrible that there are many potentially unsafe ingredients in art supplies.
Here’s our shared conflict in a nutshell: Art could not be more important! Parents don’t want to curtail their kids’ expressions! Parents don’t want kids using unsafe chemicals!
Sigh.
Tell Congress: Protect Our Families From Harmful Toxic Chemicals
Given both the importance of art and the potentially unsafe ingredients, I hope the following thoughts will be helpful guidelines for you and your tween artist.
What’s potentially harmful in art supplies?
While there is some legislation of hazardous ingredients in arts and crafts supplies (see below), toxic chemicals remain in varying amounts. Heavy metals like cadmium, lead, a neurotoxin, and arsenic have been found in paints, so have volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Certain bright pigments—some yellows, oranges, and greens—can contain chrome or cadmium. Solvents are also a concern in markers. Anything sprayed from a can (fixatives, paint) can release air-polluting fumes linked to a wide variety of health issues. Modeling clays can contain polyvinyl chloride and hormone-disrupting chemicals that make it flexible. Hazardous dust can be created from everything from charcoal drawings to sanding sculptures. Dust can harm lungs to varying degrees, depending on what it is made of. Some glues can contain formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, while others contain flammable solvents. I could go on; I’m just skimming the surface here.
Also, as many of these art supplies are encased in plastic, they create mountains of harmful waste. This could, I guess, create microplastic pollution in your tween’s bedroom, but mostly the piles of plastic paint containers, markers, and nonrefillable plastic pens and pencils harm the environment. And I have to mention that manufacturing art supplies—from paper to canvas to paint—has real environmental impact too and can harm communities living closest to the plants.
Ages and stages
These concerns are, disturbingly, not limited to adult art supplies. The nonprofit Defend Our Health found that one of the biggest brand names in art supplies was reportedly using formaldehyde in their markers and finger paints! Younger kids are more vulnerable to the bad stuff in their art supplies. They are still sometimes gnawing on their crayons or otherwise licking their hands, plus they’re so small and still developing.
I was incredibly careful about art supplies when my kids were very young. I researched and only let them have things like big beeswax crayons dyed with natural plant and food dyes. As their art progressed and they moved into wanting to try different art supplies, I figured out what labels and certifications were meaningful and what to always avoid. I also increased ventilation in the spaces where they were working and reminded them to always wash their hands after creating and before eating.
Legislation
I want to touch on the legislation out there to protect artists of all ages from toxic substances in arts and crafts supplies, while acknowledging that it’s pretty loose.
The Labeling Hazardous Art Materials Act (LHAMA) was enacted in 1988 (and updated since) to amend the Federal Hazardous Substances Act (FHSA) and requires the labeling of chronically hazardous art materials. As a result, art supplies sold in the U.S. are supposed to be labeled “conforms to ASTM D 4236” to indicate that the chronic health hazards of a product have been considered. According to ASTM, labels should include the word WARNING, list potentially chronic hazards, name chronically hazardous component(s), plus safe handling instructions, and more.
LHAMA mandates that art supplies also contain warnings like “harmful or fatal if swallowed” or “may cause skin irritation” plus stricter warnings for allergies, cancer, blindness, and birth defects. Sadly, LHAMA does not ban art supply companies from making products that could cause such things in the first place! And it does not require ingredient lists so consumers shopping for art supplies are in the dark.
That said, states with strong chemical regulation are shifting art product labeling, which is a good thing. For example, California’s strict Proposition 65 influences art supply labeling nationwide; it’s rare to make a warning label for just one state.
What to use?
When I am shopping for art supplies, I always look for seals from the independent nonprofit Art and Creative Materials Institute (ACMI); their methods for assessing toxicology are considered stringent. I also use my brain. In each category of art supplies, there are “better” options. For the markers in your daughter’s bedroom, choose water-based over solvent-based. Pencils are unlikely to present hazards; lead has thankfully given way to safer graphite.
Still, what is referred to as “dry drawing media” can create dust hazards. Colors in pencils are bound by resin. Erasing and blowing the dust around makes it airborne. For dusty projects, ventilation is key. We set up a “studio” in a spot with a wall of windows for these sorts of projects—and for any oil painting. We clean by wet wiping surfaces. For school projects like charcoal drawings that required “fixing” with aerosol spray fixatives containing solvents, we had our daughter spray outdoors and wear a mask. I tried to keep her using safer acrylics for as long as I could before she blossomed to oil paints. But we have no say about the products she uses at college, though the filters in the painting studio there are large and whirring at all hours.
As artists grow older, parents concerned about toxic chemicals in art supplies ultimately have less and less control. I decided the art was the most important thing and taught them both best practices for minimizing exposure to art supplies. You will need to decide what you want your home rules to be.
Tell Congress: Protect Our Families From Harmful Toxic Chemicals