Major toy companies did not disclose toxic chemicals in Maine
Several manufacturers of popular children’s products disclosed using hazardous chemicals like cancer-causing formaldehyde in other states while failing to report those toxic ingredients to Maine regulators, public records show.
The findings highlight a vulnerability in the state’s public health oversight: laws designed to protect consumers rely on corporate self-reporting, allowing companies to reveal chemical hazards to regulators in some states while keeping local officials and families in the dark.
Investigators at Defend Our Health, a Portland-based advocacy group, uncovered the reporting gap while auditing filings in a multistate chemical clearinghouse shared by Vermont, Washington and Oregon.
In those three states, Crayola reported adding formaldehyde to more than 300 children’s products, including washable felt-tip markers, sticky tubs of finger paint and modeling clay, according to the clearinghouse.
Build-A-Bear Workshop, a retail chain where customers can assemble their own stuffed animals, disclosed the presence of phthalates, arsenic and heavy metals like mercury in toy accessories.
Yet neither company filed the required chemical disclosure documents with Maine authorities before offering those same product lines in local store aisles, according to Defend Our Health and state officials. Neither company replied to phone calls or emails asking why they did not disclose in Maine.
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Emily Carey Perez de Alejo, executive director of Defend Our Health, said the discoveries alarmed her. She is the mother of a 4-year-old who regularly uses Crayola art supplies.
“Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen,” she said. “I’m beyond outraged that a trusted brand like Crayola thinks it’s OK to put something so dangerous in a product found in nearly every home and school in the country.”
Perez de Alejo contacted Crayola for an explanation. Initially, a representative told her by email Crayola had never added formaldehyde to its products. Then, after she cited the report filed in Vermont, Crayola told her that it had eliminated formaldehyde in 2025.
However, the company provided no documentation to verify the change, and disclosures in the multistate database continue to list formaldehyde as an active ingredient in Crayola products.
On its website, Crayola maintains that its entire product lineup is safe for children, pointing to third-party evaluations that found no toxic substances in quantities significant enough to harm humans.
Build-A-Bear appears to have removed mercury from all but one of its products, according to its 2025 filings in Vermont. Perez de Alejo recognized that as an improvement, and hoped that Defend Our Health’s calls to the company helped, but said its use in any product remains indefensible.
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Enacted in 2008, Maine’s Kid-Safe Products Act protects children by identifying toxic chemicals in consumer products, requiring manufacturers to report their use and encouraging safer alternatives. Implementation rolled out gradually starting in 2011 as the state phased in reporting deadlines and sales bans for specific priority chemicals.
Defend Our Health’s safe kids campaign builds on its past work to track chemical risks in Maine.
After industrial contamination from forever chemicals, or PFAS, polluted local drinking water wells and devastated Maine farms, state lawmakers enacted groundbreaking bans on the use of PFAS-laden sludge fertilizer and PFAS in food packaging and consumer goods.
To help residents navigate store shelves following the consumer goods ban, Defend Our Health scoured the websites of hundreds of cookware manufacturers to compile a searchable directory that identifies thousands of noncompliant products.
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The group applied that same strategy to children’s items, converting hard-to-navigate and often obscure regulatory spreadsheets into free searchable tools for parents and consumers.
Doctors say chemicals pose a higher risk to children because their bodies are still growing.
The American Academy of Pediatrics says formaldehyde can trigger severe allergies and increase cancer risks; phthalates can damage the hormone system and disrupt growth; and lead and mercury harm brain function and development.
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Under Maine law, manufacturers must disclose any priority toxic additives within 30 days of starting to sell a product in the state. The Department of Environmental Protection confirmed neither Crayola or Build-A-Bear had filed a disclosure.
“If a manufacturer is selling a regulated children’s product that contains an intentionally added priority chemical in the state of Maine without filing a report, they are noncompliant with Maine law,” said Deputy Commissioner Dave Madore.
State officials can demand a certificate of compliance and halt sales of unreported products, he said. After being alerted by Defend Our Health, state officials contacted Crayola regarding those missing reports, he said. The agency did not know about Build-A-Bear’s missing reports.
Maine law permits the sale of products containing priority chemicals as long as manufacturers properly report them, but state regulators rely on those filings to construct legal cases for future bans, Madore said.
Prohibiting a chemical requires substantive evidence and legislative approval, Madore said.
The DEP is working on a way to make these chemical disclosures accessible to Maine residents.
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Tagged: children, education, environment, public health, retail
Penny is excited to be the Portland Press Herald’s first climate reporter. Since joining the paper in 2016, she has written about Maine’s lobster and cannabis industries, covered state politics and. More by Penelope Overton
