When pleasure becomes poison: Sex toys may release toxic nanoplastics into users genitals

Sex toy tester Deon Black was about to try out a new toy with his girlfriend when the device suddenly became very hot and burned him.

He escaped with only a few burned fingers, but after years of testing sex toys for work, the incident led him to question the safety of the devices.

Mr Black was shocked by the research on the subject he discovered, which shows that sex toys release micro and nanoplastics into your genitals. They can also be absorbed through the skin and enter the bloodstream, and have been linked to cancer, infertility and birth defects.

Microplastics are small plastic particles less than five millimeters long that detach from larger plastic objects. Nanoplastics are even smaller, with a diameter of only 100 nanometers or less.

Sex toy microplastic under the microscope. A – anal toy, B – beads, C – external vibrator, D – double vibrator

The degree of wear is the amount of plastic that has been fragmented from the toy. The anal toy showed the highest chafing rate, followed by the beads, then the double vibrator and finally the external vibrator

From your genitals, they can infiltrate your bloodstream through the skin barrier and enter phthalates, a group of chemicals used to make plastics more durable, flexible and long-lasting, into the brain, lungs and placenta. Phthalates have been linked to cancer, infertility and birth defects.

Claiming that consumers are “completely in the dark” about the risks of using sex toys, Mr. Black has started a petition asking FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf to classify sex toys as Class II devices, making them subject would be subject to special health controls, such as clinical testing and stricter safety regulations.

Class II devices are medical devices that pose a moderate to high risk to the user, such as electric wheelchairs and some pregnancy test kits.

The petition currently has 2,274 signatures and has reached its goal of 10,000.

Research into plastic exposure through sex toys is limited, but a March 2023 study found that all sex toys tested released microplastic and nanoplastic through wear and tear, where small fragments of the toy come loose due to friction during use.

The researchers from Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, tested four types of sex toys currently available: anal toys, beads, double vibrator and external vibrator.

Nanoplastics contain phthalates – a group of chemicals used to make plastics more durable, flexible and last longer.

Exposure to phthalates is blamed for 100,000 premature deaths annually in the US.

The chemicals are known to disrupt hormone production in the body and are “linked to developmental, reproductive, brain, immune and other problems,” according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

In the 2023 study, phthalates were present in all sex toys tested at levels that exceeded danger warnings – even in those products labeled as ‘phthalate-free’.

One sex toy looked at in the researchers’ preliminary testing was openly advertised as being “phthalate-free,” but their chemical analyzes showed this was not the case.

They found that all four sex toys tested in the bulk of the study contained phthalates that were either above the 0.1 percent weight limit for a specific phthalate called di-n-octyl phthalate, or phthalates that are banned by the European Union. United States Chemicals Agency. EU.

This limit applies to children’s toys and it is not illegal to currently sell sexual wellness products.

However, the study only tested four toys, and the researchers wrote: “This data set is not intended to be representative of sex toys as an entire class of products, nor do the abrasion experiments claim to simulate exact conditions of use.”

Mr Black believes the stigma surrounding sex toys is holding back research.