Toxins

We leave some important things out of our products. With good reason.

A worker in Shanghai, China, assembles an iPhone 5c, which is free of BFRs, PVC, and other harmful toxins.

We continue to lead the industry in reducing or eliminating harmful toxic substances to keep both people and the environment healthy. We’ve removed many harmful substances from our products, and we go to great lengths to make sure they stay that way. And our suppliers must adhere to our Regulated Substances Specification, which goes beyond the minimum required by law.

No product should be hazardous to your health. Or anyone else’s.

Better for the environment. Good manufacturing processes and responsible recycling minimize toxins in our supply chain. That helps keep our land, air, and water free from pollutants. And our environmental standards for our suppliers are often higher than those required by law.

Download our Regulated Substances Specification list, which must be adhered to by all our suppliers. Download now

Better for the people who use them. No one spends more time with an Apple product than an Apple customer. By minimizing or outright eliminating many harmful toxins, we ensure that each product is safe to use, year after year. Our power cords are PVC- and phthalate‑free.* Our touchscreens are arsenic-free. And our cases and enclosures are BFR‑free.

Better for the people who make them. Apple is committed to providing safe working conditions for the people who make our products. Many toxins are restricted not only in the products themselves but also in the manufacturing processes. And our suppliers know how seriously we take this. Our Regulated Substances Specification requires them to demonstrate compliance and subjects them to third‑party testing.

View our Supplier Responsibility Report

The worst toxic offenders

Beryllium

Found in copper alloys used to make connectors and springs. iPhone 6, iPad Air 2, and MacBook were designed without the use of beryllium.

Mercury

Present in the fluorescent lamps that once backlit Mac displays. Eliminated from our displays since 2009.

Lead

Formerly used in display glass and solder. Phased out completely from our products in 2006.

Arsenic

Traditionally used for clarity in glass. Our display glass has been arsenic‑free since 2008.

Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC)

Still widely used by other companies in computers, cables, and power cords. We began phasing out PVC in 1995.*

Brominated Flame Retardants (BFRs)

Toxic compounds added to plastic enclosures, circuit boards, and connectors. Eliminated from our products in 2008.

Phthalates

Used to soften plastics in cables and power cords. We finished eliminating them from our cables and power cords in 2013.*

Our investment in green chemistry is driven by both our passion for innovation and our commitment to safety.
Art FongEnvironmental Toxicologist, Apple,at our polymer engineering lab in Cupertino, California.

We design our products with greener materials.

We’re conscious of how glass, plastic, metal, and other materials affect our products as well as the environment. We lead the industry in reducing or eliminating environmentally harmful substances, and we’re always striving to make our products more environmentally friendly.

Testing for toxins right from the start.

We work closely with our suppliers to make sure our products are free from the harmful substances we specify, and we confirm it in our own Environmental Testing Lab. We submit our products’ components to rigorous analysis including X‑ray fluorescence spectroscopy, laser‑induced breakdown spectroscopy, and ion chromatography.

A technician in our Environmental Testing Lab in Cupertino, California, ensures the safety of our products.

We can do a lot. But we can’t do it alone.

We’ve formed our own Green Chemistry Advisory Board to stay in the forefront of identifying, minimizing, and eliminating toxins from our supply chain. We have also established a roundtable on toxins to learn from top U.S. and international NGOs how we can make our products and processes even safer. We’ll continue to seek out and take advantage of the best science, data, and solutions to keep both people and the planet healthy.