While consumers may assume that the products on back to school shopping lists, like markers, pens, and art supplies, are free of hazardous chemicals like lead, mercury, formaldehyde, arsenic, and endocrine-disrupting phthalates, companies’ chemical disclosures tell a different story.
Defend Our Health, a Maine-based nonprofit that advocates for evidence-based policies to reduce families’ exposure to toxic chemicals, reviewed the chemical disclosures submitted to the Interstate Chemical Clearinghouse (IC2) High Priority Chemicals Data System (HPCDS). The team discovered multiple big-name brands, including Crayola, Michael’s, Target, Dollar Tree, Dollar General, and Family Dollar, that have reported the presence of formaldehyde (a known human carcinogen) or other chemicals of concern in children’s products in their most recent publicly available data.
Defend Our Health has compiled the most recent publicly-available data from these company reports to Washington, Oregon, and Vermont, and created a free searchable public resource to help consumers who are shopping for kid’s art supply and school supply products make the choice that’s right for them with the best information about what’s in the products they’re buying.
In addition to making this information more easily accessible to consumers and parents, Defend’s team coordinated with regulators to confirm requirements for kid’s product chemical disclosures in multiple states, including Maine, Oregon, Washington, California, and Vermont. Defend then crosschecked the data reported by brands to flag potentially missing data reports (where a company reported a chemical of concern to one state but had no publicly available report for that timeframe in other states with similar reporting requirements).
“While the project started as a way to monitor compliance with Maine’s Safer Chemicals in Children’s Products law, the positive impacts of this review are nationwide – more companies are filing disclosures that consumers and regulators can see, and more companies are taking steps to follow coordinated multi-state rules around protecting children from hazardous chemicals,” said Emily Carey Perez de Alejo, Defend’s executive director.
The team reached out to each company to encourage them to make sure that all required reports are submitted for all required states. Multiple companies have already notified Defend that they have submitted missing disclosure reports or that they have phased out the use of the reported chemicals (and will alert regulators that no further reports will be submitted due to elimination of those hazardous chemicals in their products).
Carey Perez de Alejo also shared a personal note: “As the parent of a four year old, some of the data disclosed to states was especially alarming to me – like Crayola’s disclosure that formaldehyde was added to their markers and finger paints, products that my daughter uses regularly and that are labeled non-toxic. We actually reached out to Crayola, because while they reported to Vermont that they used this ingredient in over 300 products in 2025, it appeared they hadn’t filed similar reports in Oregon and Maine, where reporting was also required. Crayola, over phone and email, told us that they had phased out use of formaldehyde last year, but we couldn’t verify that statement with any publicly available source. If they really phased out the use of this known human carcinogen, that’s fantastic news – and I hope that they can help their industry peers to also move away from formaldehyde.”
State disclosure requirements like those in Vermont, Oregon, Washington, and Maine, are a critical tool to reducing toxic exposures in consumer goods, adding positive pressure to adopt safer chemicals in manufacturing in three ways:
- Requirements to disclose hazardous chemicals, whether intentionally added or as contaminants, force companies to understand and acknowledge the use of these chemicals in their manufacturing and can spur them to start phasing out concerning ingredients and sources of contamination.
- Data submitted to one state can be reviewed by regulators across the country to monitor the use of hazardous chemicals in consumer goods and to support compliance enforcement and new rulemaking around the use of those chemicals (e.g., data can support Alternatives Assessment processes in states like California and Washington).
- Consumers who want to avoid buying products that contain intentionally-added hazardous ingredients can use the data that companies share to shop in alignment with their values. Some states require disclosures to be on product labels on physical products and online sales listings, which can further encourage companies to reduce their use of hazardous chemicals.
Defend Our Health works to ensure that companies are fully aware of their chemical reporting and disclosure responsibilities. The organization brings the data that companies share to consumers and regulators who can turn this data into health-protective action in Maine and nationwide. This project builds on the approach that Defend used recently to review the websites of more than 200 cookware brands and create a searchable directory of chemical disclosure pages including whether brands disclose intentional use of PFAS forever chemicals.
**Note, the information presented in this children’s product resource was reported to the states by manufacturers of children’s products through the IC2. The presence of a chemical in a children’s product does not necessarily mean that the product is harmful to human health or that there is any violation of existing safety standards or laws. The reporting triggers are not health-based values.
If you found this information useful and would like to support Defend Our Health’s work, please consider becoming a monthly sustainer! Together, we can expose avoidable toxic chemicals in consumer goods and advocate for safer solutions that protect families and communities.
