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The Pattern Behind Teething Toy Recalls
Every few months the CPSC publishes a new teething toy recall, and the reasons tend to cluster around the same handful of problems: the wrong geometry, the wrong chemistry, or the wrong product category entirely. Understanding which specific materials and design choices triggered these recalls is the most direct answer to the question parents search most — what materials are unsafe in baby teething toys?
Teething toys sit at an unusual intersection of safety risk. A baby gnaws on them for extended periods, often unsupervised during naps. That makes both chemical exposure and physical hazard relevant at the same time, which is why the CPSC and the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) treat teethers as a distinct category of “child care article” — defined as a product intended to help children age 3 and younger with sucking or teething.
The recalls documented below are drawn from CPSC.gov records. Each one names a specific material or structural failure. Taken together, they form a practical checklist for any parent evaluating a teether.
Undersized Silicone Components: The Most Active Recall Category in 2025–2026
The highest-volume teething toy recalls in recent years have not involved toxic chemistry at all — they’ve involved silicone strings that are simply too small.
In early 2026, the CPSC recalled the Yetonamr Pull String Teething Toy (sold on Amazon from June through October 2025) after receiving 32 reported choking incidents. The agency stated that the recalled toys “violate the mandatory standard for toys because the silicone strings are smaller than permitted,” and that the strings can reach the back of the throat and become lodged, posing a risk of respiratory distress, serious choking, and death. Shortly after, two nearly identical recalls followed: the AiTuiTui Pull String Teething Toy (Vanfun) and the Tiyol Pull String Teething Toy (ZW Creations) were both pulled for the same reason — silicone strings that were smaller and, in the Tiyol case, also longer than the mandatory standard allows.
All three products shared the same underlying design: an off-white disc with pull-string “tentacles” of various colors. The silicone itself was not inherently toxic. The problem was geometry — string diameter below the minimum size required by the toy standard — which turned a material generally considered safe into a deadly choking mechanism.
This is a useful distinction for parents to internalize. Silicone is not categorically dangerous. Food-grade silicone that meets size and structural requirements is widely considered one of the safest teether materials available. The hazard in these recalls was non-compliant form, not the silicone chemistry itself. When evaluating any silicone teether, the relevant questions are whether the piece is large enough to prevent throat lodging, whether it passes CPSC and CPSIA certification, and whether the manufacturer has third-party test documentation.
Loulou Lollipop’s silicone teether collection is made from 100% food-grade silicone, is free of BPA, PVC, phthalates, lead, and cadmium, and exceeds all US CPSC and CPSIA safety requirements — with inks injected into the silicone rather than applied on top, so there’s no surface coating to chip or peel.
Lead, Phthalates, and the Chemical History of Baby Toy Recalls
The CPSIA was enacted in 2008 specifically in response to a wave of high-profile recalls involving hazardous lead levels and other dangerous materials in children’s products. Before that legislation, lead paint in toy coatings was the dominant recall driver. Lead is toxic if ingested, and children who mouth toys for extended periods face meaningful exposure if the surface coating contains it.
The CPSIA addressed this by establishing strict limits on lead content in children’s products and requiring third-party laboratory testing before any product can enter the US market. Teethers, as child care articles under the law, are subject to those requirements.
Phthalates are a separate but related concern. These are plasticizing chemicals added to PVC and other soft plastics to make them flexible — and they were historically common in soft teething rings. The CPSIA prohibits phthalates at concentrations greater than 0.1% (1,000 ppm) in the accessible components of children’s toys and child care articles, including teethers. The CPSC’s own guidance specifically lists teethers among the child care articles covered by the phthalate prohibition. Phthalates are toxic if ingested by young children and can cause adverse health effects, including hormonal disruption at sufficient exposure levels.
So when a parent asks whether PVC or soft plastic teethers are safe, the honest answer is: it depends entirely on whether the specific formulation has been third-party tested and certified phthalate-free. Products that comply with CPSIA are required to carry a Children’s Product Certificate (CPC) documenting that compliance. Without that documentation, there’s no reliable way for a consumer to know what plasticizers were used.
For this reason, food-grade silicone — which does not require plasticizers to achieve flexibility — has become the material of choice among safety-focused baby brands. It achieves softness through its molecular structure rather than through chemical additives, which eliminates the phthalate risk category entirely.
Amber Teething Necklaces: A Physical Hazard Disguised as a Natural Remedy
Amber teething necklaces occupy a different risk category than the chemical and size-compliance issues above, but the CPSC and FDA have both flagged them with equal seriousness. The FDA received a report of an 18-month-old who was strangled to death by an amber necklace during a nap, and separately documented a case of a 7-month-old who choked on beads from a wooden teething bracelet and was hospitalized.
The American Academy of Pediatrics states that infants should not wear any jewelry, and the FDA has issued formal warnings that teething necklaces and bracelets — made of amber, silicone, wood, or marble — should not be worn by infants due to strangulation and choking risk.
Published research supports the concern. A peer-reviewed study testing 15 amber teething necklaces found that 80% failed to open with 1.6 pounds of force — the mean force required to occlude a young child’s airway. Nearly half failed to release even at 15 pounds, the force used in the ASTM standard for children’s jewelry. These necklaces pose a strangulation risk to young children if they were to become caught.
The material concern here is not amber itself. As one manufacturer’s own recall notice acknowledged, “the amber in itself is not intrinsically harmful — it is the composition of the products from small parts which has been found to be potentially hazardous.” The hazard is the necklace format: beads that can detach and lodge in an airway, and a cord that can tighten around a neck during sleep.
This is why the relevant distinction is format, not material. A silicone bead on a necklace is just as dangerous as an amber bead on a necklace. The risk comes from wearing anything around an infant’s neck, not from the specific substance the bead is made of.
Structural Failures in Wood Teethers
Wood teethers have also generated recalls, though for structural rather than chemical reasons. In 2021, Hallmark recalled teethers made of softwood after receiving four reports of the wooden rings breaking. The hazard was straightforward: broken wood pieces expose small, hard fragments that pose a choking and aspiration risk to infants.
The failure mode here is material integrity under mouthing stress. Softwood, when gnawed repeatedly, can splinter. Beechwood — a denser hardwood — is the more common choice in quality wooden teethers precisely because it holds up better under chewing pressure. But even with harder woods, the structural integrity of joints, attachments, and finishes matters. The Hallmark recall involved not just the wooden rings but the plush animal attachments that came with them, which could detach.
For wood teethers, the questions to ask are: what species of wood, what finish or coating was used (and is it food-safe), and are all attached components secured in a way that passes the CPSC’s small-parts testing requirements?
What Safe Teether Materials Actually Look Like
Taken together, the recall record points toward a short list of material and design characteristics that correlate with safety.
Food-grade silicone — when properly sized, certified, and free of surface coatings — has the strongest safety profile. It contains no phthalates by formulation, carries no lead paint risk, and its flexibility is structural rather than chemical. The key certifications to look for are CPSC compliance, CPSIA certification, and explicit confirmation that the product is free of BPA, PVC, phthalates, lead, and cadmium.
Beechwood, when used as a teether body rather than an attachment or small part, is generally considered safe if the finish is food-safe and the piece is large enough to fail the small-parts choking test. Avoid softwood and avoid any wood teether with small detachable elements.
Avoid: PVC without phthalate-free certification, soft plastics without a Children’s Product Certificate, any necklace or bracelet format regardless of material, undersized string or tentacle components, and surface-painted products without explicit documentation of food-safe inks.
The CPSC’s SaferProducts.gov database is searchable by product type and allows parents to check whether a specific product has been reported or recalled. Subscribing to CPSC recall emails is the most reliable way to stay current, since recalls can be issued for products that were sold years before the safety issue surfaced.
For parents specifically shopping for silicone teethers, Loulou Lollipop’s teething collection uses 100% food-grade silicone with water-based, food-safe inks injected into the silicone — not applied on top — which eliminates the surface-coating risk that has triggered recalls in other product categories. All pieces exceed US CPSC and CPSIA requirements and carry the relevant third-party certifications.