FOOD AND POLYMER CLAY
If Polymer Clay is non-toxic, why then, you might ask, can't you put food in a Polymer Clay bowl? Well, let me tell you it has a lot more to do with the food than the clay. The inert baked clay is not going to poison you. Polymer Clay is not a food grade plastic mainly because it is very porous. You cannot clean it well enough to insure no little bugs are going to grow in leftover food.
People naturally assume that a material that is not food grade is somehow dangerous. This is not always the case. While there are some materials -- some pottery, for example, contains lead in the earth clay -- that are in fact dangerous in and of themselves, Polymer Clay is not one of them. Polymer Clay's story is that it simply doesn't sanitize well.
IN CONCLUSION
It has been suggested that the scares over Polymer Clay toxicity have grown due to the duplicity of early Polymer Clay artists who thought, "If we scare people off, there will be less competition." Then those scares grow and get passed around innocently by people who are genuinely concerned.
No one can say if this allegation is true or not. I would say that it is a possibility. If you feel the need to take a lot of precautions in order to feel safe, I will not tell you that you shouldn't.
I would ask, however, that you not go around like chicken little crying that the sky is falling, because it scares talented new people from picking up the clay. We lose new blood over this sort of thing.
Use your common sense when you work with clay. Don't make a meal of it, but don't freak if your miniature poodle happens to chomp on some. And if you screw up and use a knife that you cut clay with to butter your toast one morning, you don't have to call poison control.
