The association has tested around thirty school products and concludes that almost half of them contain potentially harmful components.
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Dangers in your children’s kit? The manufacture of school supplies is insufficiently supervised and potentially dangerous components are found in many of them, believes the association UFC-Que Choisir, which calls on parents in particular to avoid the purchase of ballpoint pens.
consumer protection association “advises parents not to buy ballpoint pens for their children given the cocktail of harmful substances found in all the references tested”, she said in a statement released Thursday.
A few days before the start of the school year, the association has indeed tested around thirty school products (pens, markers or highlighters) and concludes that almost half of them include potentially dangerous components. It is “reprotoxic and endocrine disrupting phthalates, carcinogenic impurities, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, isothiazolinones, benzyl alcohol, toluene and benzene”, lists the association.
These components are known to be likely to cause multiple pathologies (from allergies to cancer), even if this risk remains theoretical in the absence of studies on the possible concrete consequences on the health of pupils.
However, the risk is taken seriously enough by the health authorities for one of them, the National Health Security Agency (Anses), to be concerned about it at the beginning of the summer. She had considered the legislation insufficient and had asked to align the European legislation with that, much more restrictive, in force for toys, taking up a request already expressed for a long time by the UFC-Que Choisir.