Nathaniel LeMaster

This is the story of the U.S. pencil industry. Remember, we are looking back from our vantage point of [ten years in the future]. It’s strange to think that, back in [our school days], just anyone could use a pencil any way he wanted to.

You see, it all started when the Occupational Safety & Health Act carcinogen policy went into effect. The graphite in the pencil leads always contained a residue of crystalline silica. And there was at least one animal test and an in-vitro test indicating that crystalline silica produced tumors, so the material became regulated as a carcinogen. There was no alternate for pencils, so exposure had to come down almost to zero. Workers were put into protective clothing, and that solved the problem initially.
But then the Environmental Protection Agency, acting under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, which soon had their own carcinogen policies, required drastic reductions in emissions and effluents. The control technology was quite expensive, and only the largest manufacturers could afford it. This caused a flurry of antitrust suits [at a time] when there were only three pencil makers left in the country. One of the three was split into smaller companies, but they soon went out of business since they were unable to afford increasingly stringent workplace and pollution control requirements. Then foreign pencil manufacturers began to threaten to dominate the pencil market, and our government, in an abrupt about- face, allowed a merger of the two remaining companies to meet overseas competition.
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“This Pencil Could Be Hazardous To Your Health”
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The Consumer Product Safety Commission then became concerned with what the newspaper headlines were calling the “pencil problem.” Rubber erasers could be chewed off and choke small children. The sharp points of pencils could also be dangerous. There were residual solvents in the paint used on pencils, and pencil-chewing seemed to be a more widespread habit than anyone had realized. Printing a legend on each pencil that said:
“This Pencil Could Be Hazardous To Your Health,” did not seem to affect consumer pencil habits, a Harvard study indicated. In fact, the study found additional potentially harmful uses, such as stirring coffee. This led FDA to declare that harmful substances could be dissolved out of the pencil into the coffee, and thus pencils violated food additive laws, including the Delaney amendment.
Trying to salvage its business, the pencil company began making pencils without paint, without erasers, and with only soft leads so they would not hold a
sharp point. But consumers were outraged, and sales declined.
Then someone invented a machine that could measure crystalline silica below the part-per- trillion level, and workplace, air emission, water effluent, and waste disposal regulations required that the best practicable technology be used to reach this low level. The pencil company was threatened with financial ruin because of the large sums needed to purchase new control equipment. There were those that wanted to ban pencils entirely under the Toxic Substances Control Act, but the government decided that pencils were necessary, particularly since they were used to write new regulations. Besides, the Senators from the state where the pencil company was located declared that pencils were as American as baseball, and should not be replaced with ball-point pens.
So the government bailed out the pencil company with a large, guaranteed loan—called a Chrysler loan in those days. But, of course, that was only a temporary measureand to protect the pencil business, the government eventually nationalized it.
It is comforting to know, after all, that society is being protected against a danger that was so obvious we didn’t even notice it for many, many years. There are still those who complain about paying $17 for a pencil, but you really can’t put a price tag on health or safety.

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The Pencil Problem—1990 by Monte Throdahi