"100% Natural" 2019 Eco-Wedge Crayons: Purple tested positive for trace levels of Arsenic and other colors tested clean

For those new to the Lead Safe Mama website:

Tamara Rubin is a multiple-federal-award-winning independent advocate for childhood Lead poisoning prevention and consumer goods safety, and a documentary filmmaker. She is also a mother of Lead-poisoned children (two of her four sons were acutely Lead-poisoned in 2005).

Tamara owns and runs Lead Safe Mama, LLC — a unique community collaborative woman-owned small business for childhood Lead poisoning prevention and consumer goods safety.
Since July 2022, the work of Lead Safe Mama, LLC has been responsible for six product recalls (FDA and CPSC).
All test results reported on this website are science-based, accurate, and replicable.
Please check out our press page to see some of the news coverage of our work, linked here.

100% Natural Eco-Wedge Crayons from 2019

For the testing on these crayons, we conducted each reading for a minimum of 180 seconds (three minutes) and repeated multiple times to confirm the results. One full set of results for each color crayon in this set is noted below.

While high-precision XRF testing of crayons is an interesting exercise (with results detectable and reported in ppm [parts per million]), fundamentally I believe that crayons should be tested to food standards (when testing for heavy metals), which are more strict than the testing standards (and required limits) for “toys and other items intended for use by children.” Toys are considered toxic in parts per million (ppm), whereas food (and other items that are ingested such as beverages, vitamins, and supplements, etc.) is considered toxic with respect to Lead and other metallic toxicants in far smaller quantities (orders of magnitude) — measured in parts per billion (ppb). You can read more about these concerns in this articled (linked here).

Note:

Given my commitment to being as accurate as possible with the test results I report for crayons (and all things we test and report on for Lead Safe Mama dot com), a “regular” box of crayons (12 to 24 crayons of various colors) can typically take a full day (or longer) to test. While I am not paid for my time when completing most of this work, my readers do chip in and help direct what I test (based on their requests and inquiries, plus testing items they send me). These crayons were sent in by a reader who wanted to know if they were safe for the children in their lives (and if they lived up to the packaging’s ambiguous claim of being “100% Natural”).

Full XRF test results for all metals detected in each color crayon for the set shown are listed below. If you would like to support this advocacy work, there is is a “chip-in” link here.

Continue reading below the image.

#1) Red Crayon

Barium (Ba): 451 +/ 110 ppm
Iron (Fe): 151 +/- 25 ppm
Titanium (Ti): 1,966 +/- 52 ppm

#2) Pink Crayon

Barium (Ba): 276 +/ 177 ppm
Chromium (Cr): 19 +/- 11 ppm
Iron (Fe): 152 +/- 38 ppm
Titanium (Ti): 2,163 +/- 63 ppm

#3) Black Crayon

Barium (Ba): 307 +/ 165 ppm
Iron (Fe): 55 +/- 31 ppm
Titanium (Ti): 335 +/- 19 ppm
Chlorine (Cl): 1,654 +/- 207 ppm

#4) Gray Crayon

Barium (Ba): 377 +/ 166 ppm
Iron (Fe): 160 +/- 38 ppm
Titanium (Ti): 2,664 +/- 72 ppm

#5) Brown Crayon

Barium (Ba): 353 +/ 149 ppm
Iron (Fe): 262 +/- 38 ppm
Titanium (Ti): 2,719 +/- 54 ppm

#6) Purple Crayon

Arsenic (As): 4 +/- 3 ppm
Barium (Ba): 378 +/ 163 ppm
Titanium (Ti): 4,016 +/- 86 ppm
Second reading: Arsenic (As): 4 +/- 2 ppm
Note: Six out of seven tests were positive for Arsenic on different parts of the crayon. This was the only color that was positive for Arsenic.

#7) Dark Blue Crayon

Barium (Ba): 375 +/ 161 ppm
Titanium (Ti): 3,558 +/- 83 ppm

#8) Light Blue Crayon

Barium (Ba): 421 +/ 224 ppm
Gold (Au): 19 +/- 10 ppm
Titanium (Ti): 5,846 +/- 145 ppm

#9) Dark Green Crayon

Barium (Ba): 362 +/ 148 ppm
Iron (Fe): 112 +/- 32 ppm
Titanium (Ti): 3,216 +/- 77 ppm
Chlorine (Cl): 482 +/- 271 ppm

#10) Light Green Crayon

Copper (Cu): 20 +/- 8 ppm
Iron (Fe): 284 +/- 28 ppm
Titanium (Ti): 2,050 +/- 54 ppm

#11) Yellow Crayon

Barium (Ba): 624 +/ 247 ppm
Iron (Fe): 149 +/- 57 ppm
Titanium (Ti): 2,518 +/- 119 ppm

#12) Orange Crayon

Iron (Fe): 148 +/- 38 ppm
Titanium (Ti): 3,356 +/- 110 ppm

Conclusions:

While, when judged merely as a “toy,” those Arsenic levels could be regarded as “just quite low ‘trace’ levels — single-digit parts per million, no biggie,” if considered as possibly “ingestible” (have you actually observed young kids playing with crayons?), then we’re talking about these same levels (as high as 7,000 parts per billion) in a very different and potentially quite dangerous context. Takeaway: Do not let your kid eat the purple crayon!

As always, thank you for reading and sharing our articles. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama