United States
Canada
126 Chemicals. One Study. A Lot to Reconsider.
Plastic toys have always carried a vague sense of concern for parents — the cheap smell of a new rattle, the soft squishiness of a bath toy. But in 2021, researchers put numbers to that concern in a way that’s hard to ignore.
The Technical University of Denmark (DTU), working alongside the University of Michigan and commissioned by the UN Environment Programme, published a study in the journal Environment International that analyzed the chemical composition of plastic toys across hundreds of materials. Out of 419 chemicals identified in hard, soft, and foam plastic toy materials, 126 were flagged as substances that can potentially harm children’s health — including 31 plasticizers, 18 flame retardants, and 8 fragrances. That works out to nearly one in three chemicals commonly found in children’s toys qualifying as a Chemical of Concern.
For parents of teething babies — children who spend extended time with toys pressed directly against their gums — that number is particularly relevant. Teething toys aren’t just handled; they’re mouthed. And mouthing changes the exposure equation entirely.
Why Teethers Are a Special Case
Most toy safety discussions focus on choking hazards or sharp edges. Chemical exposure via mouthing gets far less attention, even though the DTU research team specifically studied it. Researchers also studied exposure to chemicals via mouthing of toys, teethers, and pacifiers, recognizing that this pathway is categorically different from simply touching or playing with an object.
The mechanism matters here. During the manufacturing process of children’s products, chemical additives such as plasticizers, flame retardants, and antimicrobials are used to obtain or optimize specific properties. During mouthing, many of these additives can migrate from products into saliva since they are not covalently bound to the polymer chains. In plain terms: the chemicals aren’t locked into the plastic. They sit loosely within the material and can transfer directly into a baby’s mouth during normal chewing.
Infants and young children are considered particularly sensitive to chemical exposure due to their rapid metabolic rate, high surface-area-to-body-weight ratio, and fast growth of organs and tissues. A dose of a chemical that might register as negligible in an adult can carry meaningfully different implications for a developing infant — especially with repeated daily exposure over months of teething.
And softer plastic toys lead to higher exposure to harmful chemicals than hard toys, which is directly relevant to teethers. The soft, pliable plastic that makes a teether feel comfortable to chew is often the same type of material that holds the highest concentration of plasticizers like phthalates.
What the Study Actually Found — and What Regulations Are Missing
The DTU study didn’t just count chemicals. It ranked them by both toxicity and the likelihood of a child being exposed, giving parents and regulators a clearer picture of actual risk. Researchers from the Technical University of Denmark and Michigan State University set out to identify and rank hazardous chemicals found in a wide variety of plastic toys, and the team sought to establish both the toxicity of common chemicals of concern and the likelihood of each chemical’s exposure to a child.
One of the study’s more unsettling findings is how limited existing regulations are. For the most part, regulations and international lists of ‘chemicals of concern’ in toys focus on certain substance groups with known harmful properties, such as phthalates, but do not cover the wider range of chemicals found in plastic toys. So a toy can technically pass standard safety requirements while still containing dozens of chemicals that weren’t tested for — or weren’t covered by the regulations that were applied.
This gap matters practically. Since most plastic toys are not labelled with the chemicals they contain, parents do not know whether an item is harmful. There’s no required ingredient list on a teether the way there is on a food package. A toy can carry a “BPA-free” label and still contain a range of other plasticizers, stabilizers, or flame retardants that the label says nothing about.
The study’s authors recommended phasing out many of these substances in toys and replacing them with safer alternatives. Following the publication, Nordic Ecolabel’s requirements for toys were tightened, indicating the research had direct policy impact in some markets. US regulations have been slower to follow.
What This Means When You’re Choosing a Teether
The study doesn’t argue that all plastic toys will harm every child. What it does establish is that the chemical load in conventional plastic toys is broader and less regulated than most parents assume — and that for teethers specifically, the mouthing exposure pathway makes material choice genuinely consequential.
The clearest practical takeaway is to look at what a teether is actually made of. Food-grade silicone is a non-toxic polymer made primarily from silica (found in sand) and is completely free from harmful fillers like BPA, PVC, and phthalates. It doesn’t require the same chemical plasticizers that soft PVC does to achieve flexibility, and to earn the “food-grade” designation, it must meet strict safety standards like those from the FDA, confirming it is safe for direct contact with food.
The distinction between “silicone” and “food-grade silicone” is worth noting. Not all silicone products are manufactured to the same standard, and the food-grade designation is a meaningful filter. Silicone has a smooth, non-porous surface that resists the growth of bacteria and mold, which is a secondary but real benefit for something a baby will put in their mouth dozens of times a day.
Wood is another material worth considering, provided it’s the right kind. Traditional wooden toys are often made using plywood or particleboard that uses toxic glues containing formaldehyde and lead-based paints, so the source and finish matter. Solid, sustainably sourced hardwood like beech — finished without toxic paints or glues — is generally considered safe.
Loulou Lollipop’s silicone teether collection is built specifically around the food-grade standard. Every teether toy and ring is safety-tested by a leading third-party laboratory to ensure they are entirely free of BPA, PVC, phthalates, lead, cadmium and other toxic substances, and compliant with Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) regulations. The inks used in the designs are water-based and food-safe, injected into the silicone rather than applied on top — a detail that closes a potential loophole that surface-printed dyes could otherwise create.
For parents who want a practical checklist when evaluating any teether: look for food-grade silicone or solid untreated wood; check for explicit third-party testing against BPA, PVC, phthalates, lead, and cadmium; and treat “BPA-free” alone as insufficient, since it says nothing about the other 125 chemicals the DTU study flagged.