Certified lab finds crayon asbestos, ABC reports

The tests commissioned by ABC closely paralleled findings published by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer earlier this week. Binney & Smith, which makes Crayola brand crayons, has disputed the findings reported in the Post-Intelligencer.

Binney & Smith issued a statement Thursday stating that outside tests done by a certified lab it commissioned found no asbestos in the two crayons it tested.

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The company also tested talc, an ingredient in its crayons. Tremolite, a form of asbestos and known carcinogen, sometimes occurs as a natural contaminant of talc.

The company said outside tests showed no asbestos in the talc used as a strengthening agent in Crayola crayons.

ABC News had a total of six crayons tested from three brands. The network reported the outside lab found asbestos levels of 2.41 percent and 3.3 percent in Crayola crayons. It found levels of 2.28 percent and 2.36 percent in Prang crayons made by Dixon Ticonderoga Co. of Heathrow, Fla. It found no asbestos in the other brand it tested.

The labs hired by the P-I tested eight brands of crayons. Of those, tests showed three contained asbestos: Crayola, Prang and Rose Art. The labs repeated tests on 40 crayons from those three brands, concluding that 32 contained more than trace amounts of asbestos. The percentages ranged from 0.03 percent to 2.86 percent.

The P-I, ABC and Crayola all have supplied their lab reports to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Jane Francis, a spokeswoman for the commission, said the commission has hired an outside lab to test crayons. Those results could be available next week, she said.

"It's obviously our top priority, because you need to have an answer here for people," Francis said.

Some parents and schools have stopped using crayons pending more information, as recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and other health officials.

In Santa Clara, Calif., Jim Richards at the MACS laboratory, testing to answer a local school district's questions, found anthophyllite asbestos in Crayola crayons. The levels Richards found were lower than those reported by ABC and the P-I, but finding any asbestos in the crayons surprised him, he said.

"I had worked with asbestos-contaminated talc years ago and thought that whatever was being sold today would be free of contaminants," Richards said. "The levels we found are so low that they should not be a health problem, but the younger you are, the more susceptible you are to a cancer-causing agent."

In Bethlehem, Pa., officials sent a note home with elementary school students telling parents that crayons will not be used until the issue is resolved. The district has nearly 14,000 students.

This report contains information from the Associated Press.