Art Supply Safety

Recently there have been numerous news reports about imported products not
meeting safety requirements. Children¹s products like toys, clothing and
other items as well as food and health aids like toothpaste.

It seems strange that there is not procdures and agencies tasked with the responsibility to test and approve these kinds of products for sale in the United States, as it seems that these are, for the most part items manufactured in other countries and imported.
Remarkably there is a requirement for art supplies to be tested and labeled
with a certification, this is a process managed by the American National
Standards Institute and the certification for art supplies is called
ASTM-D4236. The process requires a manufacturer to submit a list of chemical
contents in a product and samples of the product itself to a testing
laboratory. The contracted laboratory will test the product; review the
ingredients and request alternations to the product¹s formulation if
necessary. This procedure is established to insure the safety of art materials for consumers.

Once the laboratory has finished this process a certificate of safety will
be issued to the manufacturer allowing the product to carry the phrase
"Conforms to ASTM-D4236". In theory this certification should provide a consumer the confidence that the art materials is non-toxic and safe for use.

One of the first problems that arose when this procedure was first developed;
artists sometimes I wish paint or other media to carry chemical
content that poses a health risk but provide much more vivid color or hues
that cannot be achieved without this content.

To handle this need of artists for products that might cause a health risk a
separate organization with special testing and approval responsibility was set up, this organization is called ACMI (Art & Creative Materials Institute, Inc.) , this organization
follows the requirements of ASTM-D4236 exactly and with great care. After the
product review by ACMI, if a determination is made that the contents of a product
may pose a health danger to the user, ACMI will instruct the manufacturer to
place a Cautionary Label (CL) or Health Label (Cautions Required) Seal
(HL/CR) on the product.

What does this mean to the artist or art educator?

First, all the products tested by ACMI are tested by a single laboratory at
Duke University in North Carolina. This is a unique situation for that provides a special benefit to manufacturer members of ACMI. For art materials manufactures that are not members of ACMI to receive permission to use the ASTM-D4236 they are free to use just about any laboratory in the world. Art Materials that are certified as non-toxic and safe for use carry another seal approved by ACMI, this is the AP seal, variations on this include AP +PL, AP + New and CP all signifiers of a certification of safety.
To use the AP or any other seal of ACMI the manufacturer must use the Duke University
laboratory, this is a highly professional laboratory with professional staff and the most modern testing equipment available.
Why is this important? For the sake of argument, let us say that a manufacturer has a
hazardous material in their crayon formulationbut for reasons of cost tey do not wish to remove this material, they could conceivably arrange an additional payment to a local laboratory and, in exchange, receive a clean bill of health for their products. This is not a hypothetical
situation as I am personally aware of instances where this is exactly what
occurred and hazardous materials were brought into the US market with only an
ASTM-D4236 certification and therefore legal for sales in the US market.
One can only be certain that if an art or craft product carries the AP seal it has been tested by an independent laboratory that is absolutely ethical and beyond question of influence and the product meets all legal requirements for safety.

So my first point:
Article Continues

Do not purchase any art supplies, particularly for young people and
children, if they do not carry the AP seal. This is the only way to be
certain of the safety. I am not claiming that an art material may contain
hazardous materials if the package does not carry the AP seal, but why take
a chance?

My second point concerns disposal, Certainly I would not recommend washing
any palette down into the water system. I personally wash my watercolors
into the part of my garden that is not used for food plants or herbs.
However any art material that carries a CL, HL/CR or HL/NT (Health
Label/Non-Toxic) label should absolutely be handled with care and treated
like any other hazardous material. This includes disposing through a local
hazardous materials center and not be sent into the local water system. The
fact that flushing these materials down a drain is almost certainly illegal
and dangerous to the community should be the operational basis of handling
these kinds of materials.

For more information on at materials safety, please go to:
http://www.acminet.org/Safety.htm

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