Two children broke out in rashes one after another. Could a crawling mat be so harmful?

Some time ago, we received a request for help from a mother. Her 11-month-old child had a rash all over his body after playing on a crawling mat for 2 hours.

What is even more frightening is that such "problematic crawling mats" are still widely circulated in the market. We purchased crawling mats of various brands through regular channels, and the results of the inspection were shocking...

01 We don’t want the scary crawling mat to be as big-headed as the dolls. What’s the point of having a big social impact? The child’s life will be ruined!

Mother Huang said sadly.

Some time ago, we received a request for help from a fan in Shanghai, Ms. Huang.

Mother Huang is a medical worker. She has a pair of very cute twins, a boy and a girl, and she takes very good care of them.

But in June this year, she bought a crawling mat from a brand’s flagship store online. Within two days, the twin boy developed a rash on his arms!

The picture comes from the Internet

Mother Huang initially thought it was a heat rash caused by the hot weather, so she applied calamine lotion to the baby boy and he recovered. She then didn't pay any attention to it.

But later, after the baby boy crawled barelegs on the crawling mat, rashes appeared on his legs and his eyes were a little swollen. She began to suspect that the problem was with the crawling mat.

It was not until the previously healthy baby girl also developed a rash after crawling on the crawling mat for two hours that Huang's mother concluded that the problem was with the crawling mat and immediately put it away.

When Mother Huang took her child to see a doctor, the doctor asked Mother Huang whether the child had been exposed to anything.

Mother Huang thought about it and realized that the baby had been fine before and nothing had changed at home. It was only until the baby used this crawling mat that these symptoms appeared.

A doctor who had treated similar cases told Huang's mother that the child might have been exposed to a crawling mat with excessive formamide.

Formamide, also known as amino formaldehyde, has certain embryotoxicity and teratogenicity. It has direct toxic effects on children's eyes and skin. After skin contact, inhalation or swallowing, it will affect the human central nervous system, reproductive system, liver and kidney function, and even affect human immunity.

The angry mother Huang immediately went to the merchant to argue and asked them to issue a report on the formamide test. The merchant insisted that their products were made of PE material, which is safer, and sent a report to Huang the next day showing that no formamide was detected.

But Mrs. Huang did not believe the merchant’s claims, so she contacted Dad’s Laboratory, hoping that we could help her with the testing.

After receiving Ms. Huang’s request for help, we immediately sent her crawling mat to a qualified third-party inspection agency for inspection.

The test results were really unexpected!

A white part of Huang Mama's crawling mat contained a formamide content of up to 2148 mg/kg!

According to the national recommended standard GB/T 39498-2020 and the Taiwan standard requirements for the upper limit of formamide content of 200 mg/kg, the crawling mat has exceeded the standard by more than 10 times!

And according to our judgment, this crawling mat should not be made of PE material, but cheaper EVA material.

In order to confirm whether it was the crawling mat that had the problem, Huang replaced it with a crawling mat that passed the inspection. After Huang's two babies left the crawling mat with excessive formamide, the rashes gradually subsided and returned to normal.

From this, we can basically judge that the child’s symptoms are most likely caused by this unqualified crawling mat.

02 Are problematic crawling mats so common? Seeing this, some parents may think that the situation at Huang's home is an isolated case. But in fact, the probability of us coming into contact with crawling mats that exceed the formamide standard is very high...

In Europe, formamide is listed as a priority concern list. According to EU regulations, formamide is classified as a Class 1B reproductive toxicant and its release amount is not allowed to exceed a certain limit.

Except for Taiwan, there are only recommended standards for the formamide content of products such as crawling mats in my country, and no mandatory regulations.

That is to say, even if the crawling mat you bought has passed the 3C certification (China Compulsory Product Certification), you may still buy a crawling mat with excessive formamide content!

Image source: Internet

In order to verify whether the crawling mats purchased by parents through formal channels are safe, we previously purchased 12 crawling mats with high sales online and in maternity and baby stores.

As a result, 5 products failed to meet the standards! The formamide content of the failed products was far higher than 200 mg/kg! The failure rate was as high as 41.67%!

Moreover, 4 out of the 5 unqualified products have passed the 3C certification!

In addition, some parents have come to us to test their crawling mats at their own expense, and the test results were also unqualified and exceeded the standard by 11 times!

It's really scary! As a product that comes into close contact with children, the formamide content is so high! It's clearly intended to be a playground for children to play freely, but it has become a petri dish for harmful substances!

Parents will be worried when they think about how much formamide their children spend on crawling and rolling on crawling mats every day and how much formamide they are inhaling without realizing it!

The two babies in Huang's family had such severe reactions after only 8 days of contact. I can’t imagine what will happen to children who are exposed for a longer period of time!

03 Why are there so many problematic crawling mats? In order to find out the truth, we interviewed upstream manufacturers.

Mr. Chen, the person in charge of a production factory, told us that when producing crawling mats, different foaming agents and processes will result in different formamide contents. High-quality foaming agents and higher processes will greatly reduce the formamide content in crawling mats.

However, the cost of high-quality foaming agents and ordinary foaming agents can differ by 4-5 times. If you want to transform and upgrade the process, it will be a huge investment.

After all, the formamide content exceeds the standard because some businesses ignore children's health for the sake of profit!

Fortunately, Mrs. Huang in this incident was a medical worker and was able to discover the problem with the crawling mat in time, but what about ordinary parents?

What if they don’t discover the problem with the crawling mat in time?

Therefore, "Dad's Laboratory" provides you with some identification methods here.

We also remind everyone to try to choose big brands and guaranteed products, and to be more careful when buying things to see if the merchant has a formamide content test report to reduce the chance of our children being harmed.

References: [1] Chen Yongxuan, Wei Linlin, Lin Wei. Determination of formamide in children's floor mats by gas chromatography [J]. Physical and Chemical Testing: Chemical Section, 2015.

[2] Sun Duozhi, Lu Chunqiang, Zuo Ying, et al. Determination of formamide content in ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer plastic children's products by headspace-gas chromatography [J]. Physical and Chemical Testing (Chemical Section), 2014(02):199-201.