Heavy Metals Content in Low-Priced Toys

Overview

Syed Ismail and colleagues measured total elemental content in 42 low-priced toy samples from convenience shops in urban Selangor, Malaysia. The toys were imported from China and grouped by toy use category and material; the routeable evidence is for finished toy paint/coatings and accessible toy substrate materials, not for food or biological matrices. Measurements were made by HDXRF and reported as total content in ppm, so the results should not be treated as EN 71-3 migration-test values even though the paper compares them with EN 71-3:2013 Category III concentration limits.

Key numbers

• Sample frame: 42 low-priced toys (< MYR 10) imported from China and purchased from convenience shops in urban Selangor between December 2015 and March 2016.
• Toy-use categories: physical activity toys N=10, intellectual toys N=11, technical toys N=5, creative toys N=9, and social toys N=7.
• Material categories: paint coated n = 4, printed ink n = 2, polymer n = 3, textile n = 2, paper n = 2, paperboard n = 5, metal n = 3, and plastic n = 21.
• Detection summary from the abstract and Results: Zn in 97% (N = 41), Sr in 90% (N = 38), Cu in 79% (N = 33), nickel (Ni) in 64% (N = 27), total chromium (Cr) in 59% (N=25), Ba in 57% (N = 24), lead (Pb) in 50% (N = 21), Mn in 43% (N=18), and total As in 24% (N = 10); cadmium (Cd), total mercury (Hg), and tin (Sn) were also detected.
• Table 4 reports EN 71-3:2013 Category III exceedance counts: Cd exceeded the 23 mg/kg limit in 3 samples, Co exceeded the 130.00 mg/kg limit in 1 sample, and Pb exceeded the 160.00 mg/kg limit in 3 samples.
• Table 4 uses ppm for toy-material concentration values and lists EN 71-3:2013 Category III comparison limits in mg/kg; the paper treats these as numerically comparable but did not perform a migration test.
• Total Cr was measured as Cr by HDXRF. The page does not classify it as Cr(III) or Cr(VI).
• Total arsenic (As) and total Hg were measured without speciation; the page labels them as tAs and tHg.

Table 4 material means, copied as reported

Values are mean ±SD where the source reports a standard deviation; single values indicate a single detected category value or no SD reported. ND means not detected in the source table.

Source-reported risk/exposure outputs

• The authors’ Figure 2 discussion reports HQ >1 for Sb in textile (HQ = 2.39) and plastic (HQ = 4.73± 6.68), total Hg in paint coated (HQ = 8.55) and metal (HQ = 1.99), and Sn in paint coated (HQ = 2.732), printed ink (HQ = 4.82), and plastic (HQ = 1.52±1.23).
• The authors state that all studied metals were within the generally acceptable cancer-risk range except Co (1.30E-02) and Ni (2.90E-02±4.10E-02), both found in metal toys.
• The paper states that plastic toys had detections for 14 elements and metal toys for 13 elements; paper had the fewest detected metals, with 5 elements.

Methods (brief)

The study purchased low-priced toys imported from China from convenience shops in an urban area of Selangor. The authors grouped the 42 toys into five ISO 8124-style toy-use categories and eight material categories. Heavy-metal content was measured using High Definition X-ray Fluorescence (HDXRF®) with an HD Rocksand XOS instrument (Model 800701-01). The paper states that XRF determines the total amount of heavy metals in toys; it does not report acid digestion, migration extraction, or bioaccessibility testing. Statistical analysis used SPSS Version 22, descriptive statistics, Kruskal-Wallis tests for material/toy-type comparisons, and Spearman correlation tests.

Related evidence

• General toys with paint/surface coatings
• Toy substrate materials (accessible plastics/metals/woods/rubbers)
• Lead
• Cadmium
• Chromium
• Nickel
• Mercury, Total
• Arsenic, Total
• Antimony
• Barium
• Cobalt
• Copper
• Manganese
• Tin
• Zinc

Update history

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