Colorant Environmental and Safety Data

Amerimulch is committed to your safety and the safety of our environment. When your pets or children run through, in, over and on mulch that has been colored with Heartland Enriched Colorants by Amerimulch, should this give you any pangs of concern? No! 

Mulch manufactured with Heartland Enriched Colorants by Amerimulch is just as safe, if not safer, than conventional wood mulches. Here are the areas of safety concern that we at Amerimulch have addressed, consistent with industry leadership:

Question: What’s in the colorant? Is there anything in the mulch colorants that is toxic or dangerous? 
Answer: No. The primary ingredients are water and iron oxide pigments - a family of colorants that is common in food and cosmetic applications. Anything can be dangerous, if improperly used in too large a quantity, but Heartland Enriched Colorants by Amerimulch are no more dangerous than common household substances like vinegar or liquid dish soap. Specifically, no chemical in the formulations is considered hazardous in the concentration amounts used in the formulations.

Question: Do your colorants have any heavy metals, lead or cadmium-based colors that are dangerous? 
Answer: Heavy metals occur in nature, including soil and wood, in small trace amounts. In tests commissioned from independent laboratories, none of our mulch colorants have tested above any reporting threshold levels for any heavy metals. That means they contain no more heavy metals than regular wood mulches, or than the soil upon which the mulch is placed.

Our customers’ satisfaction and product quality are always our primary focus. Therefore, we are concerned about heavy metals, toxicity to any organism (plant, animal, human) and the safety of our products. We do our best to make sure our products are safe and environmentally friendly. See the chart, below, to compare test results of Amerimulch materials to the EPA’s maximum pollutant concentration levels for certain materials allowed in soils and composts:

HEAVY METALS: Allowed Concentrations in Biosolids and Generally in Composts

Question: What about long-term exposure of your colorants to the environment? Are there any concerns about the environmental status of your products? 
Answer: No. None of our mulch colorants require EPA reporting under any applicable regulations, including SARA sec 313, RCRA (Resource Conservation&Recovery Act), CERCLA (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation&Liability Act), and TSCA (Toxic Substance Control Act). 

Question: I’ve heard concerns about something called VOCs. What are VOCs? Why are they objectionable? Are they in your colorants?
Answer: VOC stands for Volatile Organic Compounds. When something is classified as “volatile”, it means that it evaporates readily at normal atmospheric pressure and temperature. Water would be an example. The term “organic” means that it contains carbon.

The main environmental concerns about VOCs have to do with compounds containing aromatic hydrocarbon solvents such as xylene, toluene, naphtha, benzene, etc. Paints and other coatings based on these solvent-based systems will release these solvents into the atmosphere as the coated surfaces dry. Because Amerimulch colorants are water-based, these aromatic hydrocarbons solvents are NOT contained in any of our colorant formulations.

Because the definition of VOC is so broad and encompassing, many materials that are considered safe are also defined as a VOC. While our colorants do contain a very small amount of broadly defined VOCs, our colorants, tested per EPA method 24 for surface coatings, are safely below reporting limits.

Question: Are your colorants safe for the workers in the plants that produce colored mulches? 
Answer: At Amerimulch, safety comes first for our employees and for our customers’ employees. Amerimulch employees are not exposed to hazardous chemicals, and neither are our customers’ employees – at least, not from the mulch colorants.

Each year Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS sheets) are sent to each of our customers, and any time a revision needs to be made, an updated MSDS sheet is sent out. These sheets are a great source of chemical information. Manufacturers of any raw material must provide an MSDS to the purchaser of any chemical product, under regulations from the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA). These regulations mandate that any material classified as hazardous in concentrations greater than 1% of the raw material, or 0.1% if carcinogenic, must be identified and listed on the MSDS sheet under composition information of hazardous ingredients. Our MSDS sheets allow workers to see in print that Heartland Enriched Colorants by Amerimulch pose no threat to their health or safety.

Question: What are your colorants composed of? 
Answer: Heartland Enriched Colorants by Amerimulch consist of the following materials: 
• Pigments/colorants – organic and inorganic: 40 to 70% of the Heartland Colorant.
• Water – main vehicle carrier: from 15 to 30% of the Heartland Colorant.
• Humectants– may be used for freeze depression: from 0.5 to 4% of the Heartland Colorant.
• Resins – to help the coating and adhesion of the pigment to the wood fiber: 5-to 30% of the Heartland Colorant.
• Additives – to help the colorant’s adhesion to the wood fiber: from 0.5 to 5% of the Heartland Colorant. Some additives can be hazardous in concentrated form but Amerimulch colorants use them in such extremely small quantities that they are not a health risk. Any of the additives we use in our formulations that do meet the OSHA reporting requirements on our incoming MSDS sheets from our suppliers are NOT used in a concentration greater than 1% in our outgoing liquid colorants, so they do not need to be disclosed on the MSDS sheets and thus are considered safe.

If you have any further questions about the safety of our colorants, or for support data regarding the safety of Heartland Enriched Colorants by Amerimulch, please call or contact your Amerimulch sales representative at 330-425-4244, or toll-free USA 888-556-3304.