Safety Certification Marks

Be sure to look for one or more of these certification marks assuring your pencils conform to ASTM D4236 or EN71, part 3 standards. These standards address the product labeling and testing requirements related to the potential presence of toxic materials in pencils and other products with particular focus on the possible lead exposure risk in surface coatings.

The CE mark, or Conformité Européenne, “European conformity” in French, is a conformity mark on many products sold within the European Union. The CE mark certifies that a product has met EU consumer safety, health or environmental requirements. The applicable safety standard for pencils within Europe is EN71, part 3, which is promulgated by the European Committee for Standardization. The applicable American equivalent standard relevant to pencils is the ASTM D4236; designating the Standard Practice for Labeling Art Materials for Chronic Health Hazard governed by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). The ASTM standards are also used internationally in many other countries. Quite often you will see the CE mark shown with both standards as in this example since products are often marketed in many countries. Sometimes you will see just the statment “conforms to ASTM D4236”. Note that EN-71, part 3 is a toy standard, while ASTM D2436 is an Art Material Standard.

The Pencil Makers PMA Certification Seal is an independent certification process administered by the Writing Instrument Manufactures Association based in the United States. The PMA Seal represents a more rigorous standard and frequencey of testing and certification of component raw materials with independent verification of test results by a third-party toxicologist located at Duke University. To bear the PMA seal all component manufacturers for the pencil being certified must be certification members of the program and the products must be tested according to ASTM D2436 standards. Results of these tests are then reviewed by the toxicologist for compliance. Manufacturers must annualy certify their conformance to the program and additional tests must be performed on subsequent production batches from time to time. Note that the PMA seal refers to a particular product and certain manufacturers may choose to use the PMA seal on some products while simply complying with ASTM D2436 and/or EN 71, part 3 without the added costs of the PMA Certification program on other products. With increasing focus on product safety in recent years various countries and trading regions have begun to initiate additional regulatory standards and particularly in Europe a plethora of new certification marks are in the works. In some European cases these new marks are being integrated with new environmental compliance and corporate social responsibility standards also being put in place. As more information comes available this page will be updated with new marks relevant to product safety issues. For information on various environmental or green certification programs relevant to pencils, Click here.