Art Hygiene Law: Artists Who Use Unusual Materials and Viewers Who “Take In” The Art

By Ethan Ashley

Arsenic orange, cadmium red, vermilion, lead white, cobalt, chrome green, formaldehyde, pig skin, feces...What happens when the substrates of creativity confront the law? In today’s art world, pressures to be novel combined with unbridled inspiration have pushed artists to work with new and increasingly unusual - and controversial - mediums. For quite some time now, artists including Damien Hirst , Andres Serrano, and even Andy Warhol have experimented with unconventional and controversial materials in order to advance their visual expression. As defined by U.S. legal code under the Federal Hazardous Substances Act (FHSA), an art material is “any substance marketed or represented by the producer or repackager as suitable for use in any phase of the creation of any work of visual or graphic art of any medium” (15 U.S.C.§1277 (2016)). But what about urine? Elephant dung ? Or menstrual blood? The concerns provoked by these mediums and others divide into two categories: health and safety issues concerning toxins in art and controversies surrounding the ethics and the unsettling nature of non-traditional artworks. This article will address both categories that continue to provoke questions in the world of art.

The LHAMA

At the Federal level, the only mention of health and safety regulations in the arts is the Labelling of Hazardous Art Materials Act (LHAMA) of 1988 included as an amendment to the Federal Hazardous Substances Act of 1960. The LHAMA, proposed by James Florio (D, NJ) to the House of Representatives, regulates substances that have the potential to cause chronic health issues for consumers, including respiratory illnesses and cancer. The LHAMA was originally proposed by legislators in response to demands from “representatives from the art materials industry, consumer groups and professional artists” and was also intended to address growing concerns of toxic art materials in schools. Under the LHAMA, a professional toxicologist is required to certify the risk posed by any new art material on the consumer. Art materials covered under the LHAMA include most traditional mediums including paints, pencils, and any inks but do not account for many of the chemicals being used by artists today such as formaldehyde.