Pens and paper aren’t usually thought of as risky items to keep around your children, but Chinese manufacturers have managed to introduce toxins to normally innocuous stationery. With retail stores and online shops rolling out their “back to school” sales, parents might want to think twice before getting those colorful and fragrant school supplies.
With the United States importing about one billion US dollars of stationery products in 2015 and China making up about 40 percent of global production, much of what makes it to the shelves of stores and shops in the United States comes from the world’s most populous country.
White-out
The well-known toxicity of white-out is caused by the presence of organic solvents such as toluene. Some western companies are marketing water-based alternatives. In China, the product’s toxicity came under spotlight in a lab test involving rats.
In 2012, Jiangxi Television reported that in the experiment, the rodents were placed inside two kinds of environments: one without any white-out, while another was first filled with white-out before adding cotton balls to soak up the fluid. The rats inside the containers with white-out died within three minutes.
