I received a rather odd toy that I reviewed here -- it continued to ooze plastic goop until I threw it away. I suspect many toys are not exactly the best things to have in contact with anything you really treasure. It doesn't seem to be a concern to some of the manufacturers. And I don't know how to tell which toys are okay. Toys are made in stainless steel and in glass should be safe.

Edited by - lindi on 9/13/2004 8:37:30 PM

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http://www.womynsware.com/abtbuyerbewware.htm#CyberSkin

Does anyone know if UR3 is safe?

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I was in a leading retail lingerie/sex shop that caters to couples/women the other day. Having just read this article, I thought I'd take a look at what's on their shelves (my sex toy situation is satisfactory, so I haven't bought any in years). I didn't see one single silicone item. Everything was jelly or some variation of cyberskin, with an occasional hard plastic or latex item.

This makes me rather sad for all the people happily banging away on themselves with these products, ignorant of the potential ill health ramifications.

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For more info on them, you can look at the explanation I wrote to our customers here.

I wouldn't worry too much about toys like strokers or fake vaginas for men. The skin on the penis doesn't really absorb them the way the tissue in the vagina or anus does. So the fleshlight and similar types of things are probably okay.

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Our exposure to Pthalates go further than sex toys. As prevalent as they are in our every day, I think the key may lie in trying to minimize our exposure. For pregnant women or for those who want to reduce complications associated with their pregnancy and fetal development, this information will play a beneficial role.

Despite the lower risk of toxicity, males who use sleeves or artificial vaginas are not immune to the potential health hazzards of pthalates as the urethral opening of the distal end of the penis is in contact with the material (e.g, jelly, cyberskin, futorotic, etc.).

Caveat Emptor

edited only to make the url a live link

Edited by - lindi on 4/21/2005 1:34:59 AM

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In particular, the pediatrics link, and the studies it cites, show a very low risk of danger from DINP and DEHP, the two main "killer" phthalates. The essential problem in this being conclusive is we have no direct studies on humans, especially as pertains to sex toys.

However, please allow me to wax mathematical for a moment here (pardon me for doing so, my background is in computer programming and biology). I've taken a bit of time to read the studies originally published by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission(CPSC), the UN's International Agency for Research Cancer(IARC), a study by Wolfgang Heber in "Critical Reviews in Toxicology" and a few others.

The conclusions drawn by these groups lean towards declaring DEHP non-dangerous to humans unless consumed in large amounts over a long period. Even a 2003 report by the Center for Disease Control in the US has found among a sample of 2541 subjects that the levels of phthalates in their systems were 1/10 the considered "EPA maximum safe dose" except in extreme cases.

DEHP and DINP both have been documented to cause liver enlargement and tumors in rats, this *is* a given fact. However, one detail that is often omitted by people when talking about these issues is the dosages involved. The well known studies published by the CPSC and Heber were dosing their rats with comparatively high levels of both chemicals daily, for life. It should also be noted that the average human will not be consuming these phthalates directly, nor will they be injecting them. Moreover, even rat skin has proven fairly impermeable to these chemicals, with only 14% volume passing the skin (cited in Heber's work). Further tests on human skin based on wearing 30% PVC gloves for two hours a day yielded results in the area of .027 mg/kg of body weight, and seemed to indicate (I'm paraphrasing Heber's conclusions) that human skin was even less permeable overall.

Taking the numbers cited as the bottom end of the NOEL (no observable effect level-just what it sounds like) in rat tests, we have a tolerance of approximately 25 mg/kg of body weight as the lowest. This was for signs of liver enlargement or tumors in rats treated with DEHP. To put this in perspective, if we are talking about a 50kg (approximately 110 lbs...I'm assuming a fairly slim woman or very small man here) human being, we have 50 kg * 25 mg/kg = 1250 mg = 1.25 grams per day. That's 1.25 grams. Per day, every day for life. And that is the NOEL. Huber's studies note that a Low Observable Effect Level would be 2-4 times as much. We'll assume 2x as much, for paranoia's sake.

Admittedly my knowledge of the exact permeability of the mucous membranes of the genetalia is limited, so let's assume 100% absorbption to err on the side of caution, though I suspect the real absorption rate is a fair amount lower.

Now moving forward...the average 8" 100% jelly dong weighs in at around 320 grams, according to the specifications on a number of adult toy vendors I've seen. (Bless people listing item weights/masses. :) ) Now, according to the work of a group of German chemist cited in This CBS Marketplace Article, the worst results they pulled indicated toys contained levels of phthalates of up to 243,000 parts per million. Or, roughly 24.3% mass, or 243,000 g/kg mass. Multiplying that out, we get 24.3%*320 grams = 77.76g. That being the total phthalate content of a 100% jelly dong 8" in length and 1.5 inches across. Assuming 2.5 g every day for life, you would have to absorb 3.2% [2.5/77.76] of the phthalates every day for this to be up to the low observable effect level. This means, assuming you absorbed 100% of the content in contact with your skin, you would need 100/3.2 = 31.25 days to absorb all of the phthalates in an 8" dong, this assuming that 2.5 g of phthalates are leaking out per session, and that you were doing this daily. 2.5 g of phthalate compound would be just over 2.5 mls(cubic centimeters of liquid, in this case), due to phthalates having a slightly lower density than water. Of course, if you did not use your dong daily, you would not be truly being exposed to higher doses of chemical on the long term, this would shift the classification over to a short term, high dosage exposure, which the work of Heber and others suggest even rats are quite resistant too (this is true of most toxins, honestly. Unless you take enough to kill you outright, most toxins can be flushed out of the body even in higher doses, provided you have time without exposure to the toxin. Take alcohol as a prime example of a low-lethality toxin that nonetheless causes liver damage over a *lifetime* of high-doses. A single weekend bender now and then does not liver damage make).

Of course, it goes without saying that your dong would be losing mass during the course of this, and likely growing stiffer and more brittle as well as lighter as it leaked this toxic goo in sufficient quantities to be dangerous. In other words, this would be a fairly evident and visible process.

So, I don't mean to sound like some sort of toy manufacturing industry champion, however, I do believe a fair portion of this "all jelly is wrong" is people running in the direction of panic. The internal exposure to the phthalate toxins in jelly toys of any decent quality would be *extremely* low. Moreover, the danger of phthalates to humans is suspected by current research to be quite low. The tests with rats performed by a number of researchers are long term, high-dosage tests. The other point that I think has been neglected in a lot of citations of the CSRC and Heber's work is that Heber himself noted that the biological process by which the rats developed cancer and the like from phthalate exposure does not occur in humans, so it is impossible to extrapolate accurately from the rodent data(the UN IARC also noted this as one reason it recently withdrew pthalates from their list of known carcinogens). Also of note was his pointing out that tests with primates showed a much higher tolerance to the toxin, and lack of cancer development due to differing biology. Again, this is not an iron-clad argument, as other primates are not humans, but our genetic code is much closer to primates than rats, and our biological processes similarly so. Moreover, the UN's IARC has removed phthalates from it's list of carcinogenic compounds, and said that it is not possible to determine their effects in this area.

Phthalmates *have* been shown to cause cancer in lab rats...when they were dosed internally with high doses every day for life. By the same token, red M&M dye has been shown to cause cancer in rats, when they are fed high doses of said dye every day for life. And of course, as mentioned above, the aforementioned cancer from phthalates was caused by a biological process not present in humans. They *are* perhaps going to be more dangerous to a developing fetus or infant, as their systems have much lower toxin tolerance than a grown adult. However, even studies by the US CSPC have decided that there isn't data to support the idea that children's chew toys leech dangerous amounts of phthalates into a child's system. Being a consumer protective agency, they also did ask several companies to remove or reduce phthalate content in such teething toys, but that was a point of erring far on the side of caution (the CSPC typically tries to have any given public product have no more than the potential to release 1/100th of the No Observable Effect Level daily dosage at a given time, out of concern for safety.

I'm not saying that all jelly toys are perfectly fine. I have seen things leak a strange goo, and I am very leery of such things. Those I personally avoid. However, if you have jelly toys, and they're not leaking noticable milliliters of chemical daily, I would submit they are no more dangerous than any soft plastic or vinyl you use in your day to day life, such as rubberized cleaning gloves, large numbers of medical apparati, etc. Pretty much anything with or containing vinyl, including medical gloves, contains phthalates in some concentration or other.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is to take all the research that gets quoted around with a grain of salt. I do hold that toy manufacturers should show more responsibliity in producing a higher-grade product that does not leak dangerous quantities of toxin, but I will submit that there is no reason for well-made jelly to be any more dangerous than anything else in our lives. Especially if we store things carefully. Phthalates in other products are known to be more prone to leeching their chemicals if exposed to sunlight for extended periods of time or if heated to very high temperatures (this is actually the cause of "new car smell" 's prevalence on warm, sunny days..it's phthalate vapor rising off the dashboard after vaporizing in the sunlight). So buy carefully, care carefully, and ditch anything that looks sketchy, and one ought to be okay.

Actually, in my mind, the more present danger of jelly goods for most of us comes from their porous nature, which makes them difficult to truly clean and capable of harboring dirt and bacteria beneath their surface....

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dolly golden

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