Can you make Eva Foam without using Formamide?

[Cobul]

Formamide gives foam mats their soft, squishy texture, but some said it’s also considered a carcinogen. For these reasons, France and Belgium banned EVA foam a few years ago.

Question. Can you make Eva foam without using Formamide?

If none. Then ALL the Eva foam being sold are the world has Formamide?

 

[.Scott]

I did a quick web search on this. It seems that the restriction is applied specifically to Toy Mats and was last re-introduced in 2016 re-introduced in 2016. Apparently, EU countries are directed to limit formamide emissions form child's toys by 2017.

The limits imposed by Belgium and France have varied widely - variously 2ppm, 200ppm, and 5000ppm.

According to this site:

Typically, formamide may be present in foam mats as a plasticizer for ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA), as a decomposition product of blowing agents used in the manufacture of foam products, or as a residual solvent from EVA resin manufacture. According to the French Agency for Food Safety, Environment, and Labor (ANSES), in the case of puzzle mats, children can inhale the chemical emitted by the mats into the air.

All of the uses or sources listed in the above quote would seem to be "optional". So the direct answer to your question would be "Yes, you can make EVA that has no significant formamide".

It is also worth noting that there are many application for EVA besides toy mats. From the Wiki article, those include:

EVA is also used in biomedical engineering applications as a drug-delivery device. The polymer is dissolved in an organic solvent (such as dichloromethane). Powdered drug and filler (typically an inert sugar) are added to the liquid solution and rapidly mixed to obtain a homogeneous mixture. The drug-filler-polymer mixture is then cast into a mold at −80 °C and freeze-dried until solid. These devices are used in drug delivery research to slowly release a compound. The polymer does not biodegrade within the body, but is quite inert and causes little or no reaction following implantation.

So it would seem that a version of EVA contains small enough concentrations of formamide to be included in a mixture which eventually dissolves in the body.

I am providing one more link with this caution: This website is from a company that sells these mats.
As a seller of the product, it may be more expert than other sources, and also potentially more biased.

One of the unsurprising points made in that last citation is that the product will outgas any formamide in short order.