The companies deny it. In addition to its significant health risks, toluene is notably detrimental to the environment. In the urban atmosphere, toluene helps to form ozone and contributes to the problem of photochemical smog. In the United States, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act prohibits land disposal of toluene. Yet millions of containers of spent glue litter the city streets of Latin America.
Flammability is another hazard.
In 1978, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission banned many consumer solvent-based contact cements because of extreme flammability. Fuller's Resistol, Aralite, Tacolite and Plasticola toluene-based glues, with flashpoints well beyond that safety standard according to Spectrum Labs, Inc., border on explosive and would not be legal in the United States. Then, after largely failing to follow through on that promise, declaring the glue sniffing problem to be societal, and out of the company's hands. The numbers involved and extent of generational damage make this tantamount to industrial genocide. Despite over 12 years of documented damage to children, there have been no independent comprehensive assessments by governmental or non-governmental organizations of the extent of the problem by country or product or the health and safety of proposed chemical solutions.