From teething toys to fabrics, babies put nearly everything in their mouths! This innate curiousity makes babies truly adorable, but also potentially exposes them to harmful chemical additives that can have long-term adverse health effects. Some of these chemical additives are so common that babies experience daily exposure through their mouths, skin, and inhalation. The flame retardant chemicals used on infant and convertible car seats are a great example.
History of Car Seat Flame Retardants
Way back in 1971, the US government established guidelines for car seat flammability. To meet these guidelines, many car seat manufacturers use chemical additives as a cost-effective method of meeting the guideline without changing the sourcing or type of materials used during manufacturing. There are two common flame retardants used in car seats: brominated and phosphorus-based flame retardants, both of which have been linked to serious health effects.
Car Seat Testing for Flame Retardants
The Ecology Center periodically publishes reports from their hands-on testing for hazardous chemicals on several popular car seat brands. In late 2018, they published a report detailing the presence of flame retardant chemicals on 18 different car seats, both infant car seats and convertible car seats. They tested both the fabric car seat covers and the foam padding underneath.
The results were striking. Fifteen of the eighteen car seats tested were labeled as either moderate or high risk due to dangerous chemical content. Moderate risk means that the seat tested positive for a phosphorus and up to one bromine. High risk means that the seat tested positive for a phosphorous and at least two bromines. And these weren’t no-name car seats that nobody buys, they included seats from major brands such as Britax, Clek, Maxi-Cosi, Safety 1st, UPPABaby, Baby Trend, Chicco, Evenflo, Nuna, and Graco.
Even the most expensive convertible car seats were on the list, suggesting that even fancy car seats like those made by Britax, Clek, and Maxi-Cosi produced some unfortunate results. That’s the bad news.
Non-Toxic Infant and Convertible Car Seats
The good news is that there are some great car seats available that were labeled as low concern by the Ecology Center. Here are a few of them.
The Clek Fllo: Clek makes some of the best infant and convertible car seats on the market, including the popular Clek Floo and Foonf. These car seats are available with merino wool covers, making them an excellent non-toxic alternative to some of the more common car seats on the market. Merino wool is naturally flame retardant, so Clek didn’t need to add any harsh chemicals to these seats.
The NUNA Rava and Pipa: Like Clek, NUNA makes very high-quality infant and convertible car seats, and the Pipa and Rava are their flagship models. As of 2019, all of NUNA’s car seats are manufactured without flame retardant chemicals (and without using itchy wool!), and this is fantastic news because they make some of the best car seats on the market.
The UPPABaby Mesa: Following a similar path as Clek, UppaBaby has introduced a merino wool variant of their popular Mesa infant car seat. These include the Henry and Jordan models, which are both made with a blend of polyester and wool that meets car seat flammability requirements without any harmful chemicals.
Conclusions
Finding the perfect car seat for your baby is stressful enough as is – parents worry about it being safe, comfortable, easy to use, versatile, and well-suited to their vehicle. The last thing they want to worry about is their baby inhaling and rubbing up against fabrics and foams containing harmful chemicals. We’re lucky to live in day and age when parents are becoming more aware and vocal about what chemicals are present in products, and manufacturers are finally starting to listen.
You can find more Non-Toxic Baby Items below,