The Ultimate Sex Toy Industry Guidebook

Knowing Your Materials

It should come as no surprise, but materials play a big part, if not the biggest part when it comes to choosing a sex toy as there’s an array of materials to choose from. Some are much more friendly for your body than others, and although cheaper materials do mean less expensive toys, the issue is not just a matter of cost.
Different materials have different chemical compositions to make them more realistic or more squishy, but that can also make them more porous. The more porous the material, the harder it is to fully disinfect the toy, which makes it open to any bodily fluids, lubricants, and anything.

Sex Toy Industry Guidebook - Materials

How Phthalates Can Make You Sick

To start off, let’s explain what phthalates are. Phthalates are a group or family of chemicals that are primarily used to help soften plastic, making it more flexible. You have probably already come in contact with it without knowing as it’s in everything from pesticides to musical instruments. But what does this have to do with sex toys?

Phthalates can be found in a lot of different sex toys on the market, primarily jelly rubber and other lower quality toys. The problem with using these types of toys is that the phthalate molecules have been declared a carcinogen by the FDA and are not chemically bonded to whatever plastic they’re implemented in. This means that they can leach into your system and cause several problems within your body. 

There have been efforts to get phthalates banned from many products such as children’s toys, as it can affect the developmental growth of a child if ingested. So why has there been no such effort in an industry where you literally stick things inside you or on you for periods of time? Well…

Learning About Sex Toy Regulations

The sex toy industry is not as regulated as you would think it would be. In fact, most of the industry is unregulated except for a few vibrators that fall under the category of medical massage therapy tools, and that decision is made by the manufacturer, not the FDA or its counterparts in other countries.

For everything else that is considered a sex toy by most people, they are classified as a novelty toy under federal regulation in many parts of the world. This leaves a giant loophole for regulation as everything at Spencer’s Gifts qualifies as a novelty toy (and yes, Spencer’s does sell sex toys as well). While many things that fall under novelty toys aren’t in direct contact with the body’s internal surface, this can not be said about sex toys.

So what does this mean for you? Because of these relaxed laws, there is a huge market of counterfeit sex toys that uses places such as Amazon and Ebay to sell their merchandise under trusted names such as Lelo and We-Vibe. Not only that, but there are no rules on the materials that are body safe or the phthalate levels consistent in each toy. This means that someone can make a phthalate filled toy made of PVC or rubber, and sell it posing as a high-grade silicone toy from Doc Johnson. That’s just plain scary considering that the objects that are being purchased are going into someone’s body.
You’re probably thinking, is anything being done about this? You’ll be happy to know that companies and retailers have taken a stand against selling anything with phthalates or toxic materials, including Betty’s Toy Box. But that’s not enough as the CPSC reported 2,100 sex toy injuries between 2010 and 2012 in the US alone, many of them being toxin related. It’s clear that sex toys need to be regulated, we all need to be on the watch for counterfeits and toxins.

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