Shopping Advice 
Glass Toy Safety, Part 1
You asked, we did the research:
Inspired by this question on our Facebook Fan Page about the safety of glass toys and concerns with the possibility of lead in the glass, I decided to do some digging into how safe our glass toys are and how you can tell that the toys you are buying are good for you. I enlisted my trusty friends Destin, who is in Customer Service, and Phoebe, who is our Buyer, to see if we could find out more. Here is a brief overview of what we have learned. Check back next week for the complete interview with the manufacturer of our lovely Candy Colored Glass Dildos, Standard Glass.
Destin writes,
“We here at Babeland are used to a wide variety of considerations around product safety so when one of our customers asked us about the lead levels in our glass toys we were excited to know more ourselves! The fine folks who hand make our Candy Colored Dildo were gracious enough to answer even our most nitpicky questions. What we found is that lead can be a common ingredient in everything from the highest end to the least expensive glass products. It lowers the melting point, makes certain cutting techniques work better and adds sparkle to the glass, amongst other things. Often lead is one of the ingredients in proprietary blends used to make all those pretty colors of glass you see in the world and possibly even the colors you see inside some of our toys. The best news of all is that every one of our glass toy offerings is designed so that you are completely safe from any lead exposure. All of our glass toy offerings are made with a surface layer of either soda-lime glass, or Pyrex, neither of which contains lead. Rock on rock hard and lead free!”
Make sure you check back in the coming weeks for the full interview from Standard Glass and more great info about making sure your toys are the safest they can be.
Here’s some more info on choosing glass toys from Ask Babeland: Why would I want to buy a glass toy?
November 16th, 2010 at 2:01 pm
nice work! i love glass toys!!!
November 16th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
Maybe this info will be addressed in future entries, but I’m curious what the safety standards involved with glass pervertibles are. So like, one thing I’m thinking of are glass soda/beer bottles. I don’t know if you’ll be addressing this or not since obviously these are things that aren’t sold as intentional sex toys, but some people still use them that way and I’m just curious about the safety involved (especially when it’s a glass container that’s parially hollow — what are the chances of it breaking, etc.).
November 17th, 2010 at 11:18 am
I love the minimal amount of friction with glass toys, and the pyrex ones are usually very affordable! One word of warning though: do not drop them on the bathroom floor while you are washing them. Probably a good rule of thumb for most sex toys, but still. I broke my favorite dildo and the style had been discontinued. I’m still hunting for something that resembles the size, shape, and angle of the thing!
December 7th, 2010 at 3:46 pm
@Ellie I just wanted to take a moment to respond to your comment as we don’t have any plans to address your question directly in upcoming posts. Theoretically the glass used for food storage like beer bottles would be a lead free variety. That being said, it’s still not “body safe” and definitely not safe for use as a penetrative device. Glass toys are not cheap for a reason, beyond the obvious reality that they are handcrafted, they are also made of expensive glass stock which isn’t as fragile as the inexpensive variety of glass used to make beverage bottles, jars, etc. Sadly we hear plenty of stories from folks who’ve learned these lessons the hard way. There is even a highly viewed video online which is horrifyingly graphic where the maker says he’s only posted it to warn others from the practice. He, like many, had been using bottles, etc. for a long time until that one last time when it broke. You’ll notice that none of our glass toys are hollow, or if they are then they have very thick walls and no open end and are made of Pyrex or a similarly suited glass. The only safe way to use glass in sex is to use products specifically intended for that use.