Formaldehyde

All life forms—bacteria, plants, fish, animals and humans—naturally produce formaldehyde as part of cell metabolism. Formaldehyde is also an essential building block chemical in the production of hundreds of items such as in vaccines or personal care items.¹ However, very little, if any, formaldehyde remains in the final products that consumers use.

Small amounts of formaldehyde have long been used in the manufacture of viral and bacterial vaccines. Some vaccines, such as the polio vaccine, use the entire virus to elicit an immune response and protect against future infection. Formaldehyde is used to inactivate the virus or bacteria in the vaccine before it is administered to the patient. Formaldehyde can also be used to detoxify bacterial toxins in vaccines, such as the toxin used to make the diphtheria vaccine. Formaldehyde is also added as a preservative in some vaccines to prevent the growth of bacteria or fungi.

Formaldehyde is naturally produced in the human body for energy production and essential life processes, including the creation of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.  As indicated by the FDA, “[t]he body continuously processes formaldehyde, both from what it makes on its own and from what it has been exposed to in the environment. When the body breaks down formaldehyde, it does not distinguish between formaldehyde from vaccines and that which is naturally produced or environmental.”

According to the FDA, “there is no evidence linking cancer to infrequent exposure to tiny amounts of formaldehyde via injection as occurs with vaccines… The amount of formaldehyde in a person’s body depends on their weight; babies have lower amounts than adults. Studies have shown that for a newborn of average weight of 6 – 8 pounds, the amount of formaldehyde in their body is 50-70 times higher than the upper amount that they could receive from a single dose of a vaccine or from vaccines administered over time.”

According to information from the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute, formaldehyde is typically present in both indoor and outdoor air at low levels, usually less than 0.03 parts of formaldehyde per million parts of air—well below the threshold that is irritating to most people.⁸

Formaldehyde is an extensively regulated material. Mandatory government regulations set standards for the safe production, storage, handling and use of formaldehyde to protect human health and the environment.  Formaldehyde is one of the most well studied compounds in commerce, and its risk profile has been well characterized. According to the CDC, formaldehyde metabolizes quickly in the body; it breaks down rapidly, is not persistent and does not accumulate in the environment.⁹ The World Health Organization, among others, has concluded that there is no scientific evidence that children are more or less susceptible to formaldehyde exposures than adults.¹⁰

It is well established in the scientific literature that any potential association between inhaled formaldehyde and cancer is linked only to significant and prolonged exposures. Based on the most recent scientific studies, it is unlikely that inhaled formaldehyde is capable of triggering the mechanisms in the body that are necessary to cause cancer of the blood, like leukemia, because inhaled formaldehyde does move past the nasal tissues (since it is quickly metabolized) to reach the bone marrow where blood diseases originate.¹¹

Nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC) is a very rare form of cancer, and the results from human studies have not found an association between formaldehyde exposure and NPC.  The one study conducted by the National Cancer Institute on 25,000 workers in 10 different plants that used or manufactured formaldehyde reported 6 cases of NPC in one of the plants, but upon reanalysis of the data, the NPC cases were attributed to exposures to other known risk factors.¹²

Numerous government agencies and expert scientific bodies have concluded that the scientific evidence does not support an association between asthma and formaldehyde exposures. The WHO concluded that “[t]here is no evidence indicating an increased sensitivity to sensory irritation to formaldehyde among people often regarded as susceptible (asthmatics, children and older people).”¹³ A National Academy of Sciences report summarized the available controlled clinical studies, evaluating whether formaldehyde causes irritation in asthmatic and non-asthmatic people, and found no differences in sensitivity between the two groups (NAS 2004, NRC 2007): “. . . asthmatic individuals exposed to airborne formaldehyde at exposure concentrations at or below 3 parts per million do not appear to be at greater risk of suffering airway dysfunction than non-asthmatic individuals.”¹⁴

Through many years of voluntary stewardship efforts and as a result of the California regulation, formaldehyde resin producers and wood panel manufacturers are now delivering products that emit at, or near, naturally occurring background levels from wood itself. As required by TSCA, EPA has established national emission limits based on California’s airborne toxics control measure to control formaldehyde emissions from composite wood products.

Formaldehyde is perhaps best known for its preservatives and anti-bacterial properties, but formaldehyde-based chemistry is used to make a wide range of products. For example, the wood-based panel industry relies on formaldehyde-based resins for composite wood products. Few, if any, compounds can replace formaldehyde chemistry in creating high-quality resins without compromising quality and performance, or making the final products more expensive. While formaldehyde is an essential building block in a diverse range of wood products, its end use is primarily in a converted form. That means that virtually all of the formaldehyde is consumed in making the final product.