Health safety of Chinese cubes?

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Artic

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I was wondering if anyone knew the health safeties of Chinese manufactured cubes from Moyu, Dayan, Shengshou etc. I know they are very popular and I would like some information regarding the health safety of their products. There have been serious concerns with Chinese made toys in the past for using toxic materials with known carcinogenic causing plastics and using other harmful materials.

The cubes we purchase are all made in China where there is little to no regulation for health safety and rampant use of cheap toxic materials to create almost all of their toys.

I've tried researching these companies to find any information, but cannot find anything establishing proper use of materials in their cubes. Could any representative from Moyu, Dayan, Shengshou confirm and list the material contents of their cubes. Could anyone else post any information regarding this subject?

I really hope we are not all using toxic cubes made from unsafe materials. A lot of these materials cause birth defects and/or cancer, so we along with our children and/or younger siblings would be really affected by this.
 
Small pieces are an obvious choking hazard and would probably have a minimum age issue with stupid law suits in the U.S. but the plastic is probably only carcinogenic if you store your cubes in your water bottle.
 
Can someone list off the common plastics used for prototypes, white and black cubes off the top of their head?
 
Tempus said:
...If you eat your cube. So please, people, don't eat your cube.
Click to expand...

A large percentage of Chinese manufactured toys are painted with a coating of paint containing harmful amounts of lead. In those cases, all you have to do is touch it, and already you are increasing your chances for cancer. So please don't joke around with eating a cube, which you know is nonsense.
 
Lead doesn't cause cancer, Artic.

Personally I don't think there's any problem with speedcubes being dangerous. Sure, it's possible, but you have to consider that the big reason you occasionally see toxic products coming from China is to try to make very cheap products even more cheaply. The speedcubes you buy are actually quite expensive in relation to the cost of the plastic, which is an indicator that the makers are going for quality, not rock-bottom pricing - they do not need to get their prices as low as possible in order to compete. In addition, companies like Moyu and Dayan ride on their reputation for making good cubes, not on flooding the market with cheap plastic items. If people were somehow getting sick from using their cubes, it would cause huge and irreparable damage to their reputation, pretty much putting them out of business. For a company in that position, that kind of risk will never be worth a few cents per cube.
 
Wow, for some reason this thread has got me spooked.

Edit:

Just read the last post. Intantly less spooked, but boy, I need to stop believing everything I read....
 
qqwref said:
Lead doesn't cause cancer, Artic.

Personally I don't think there's any problem with speedcubes being dangerous. Sure, it's possible, but you have to consider that the big reason you occasionally see toxic products coming from China is to try to make very cheap products even more cheaply. The speedcubes you buy are actually quite expensive in relation to the cost of the plastic, which is an indicator that the makers are going for quality, not rock-bottom pricing - they do not need to get their prices as low as possible in order to compete. In addition, companies like Moyu and Dayan ride on their reputation for making good cubes, not on flooding the market with cheap plastic items. If people were somehow getting sick from using their cubes, it would cause huge and irreparable damage to their reputation, pretty much putting them out of business. For a company in that position, that kind of risk will never be worth a few cents per cube.
Click to expand...

Large companies we consider "trustworthy" have been exposed for manufacturing toys containing lead and other toxic materials/chemicals. All of these companies manufacture their toys in China. Examples include:

Mattel - it sold toxic dolls such as Barbies http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/05/news/companies/cpsc/
Marvel - dangerous levels of lead detected in the paints they used http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Recalls/2008...-By-Marvel-Toys-Due-to-Risk-of-Lead-Exposure/

Time and time again studies have shown that a large percentage of toys coming from China include harmful and toxic materials. You can read this study for more information:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/...de-china-lead-antimony-arsenic-cadmium-mattel

I've searched but cannot find any guarantees from Moyu, Dayan, Shengshou that they do NOT use these harmful materials in any of their products. Usually, there is a warning label attached or other information on the product itself. I would like to find out if their cubes are safe.
 
lots of plastics contain BPA which is proven to been toxic, the stickers/ cube is usually abs or pvc which contain BPA
also lube like traxxas has labels which say it might cause birth defect
 
I want to be so sarcastic with this one but I'll hold off on that in case this thread really gets out of hand.

I wouldn't be too concerned seeing as most of the harmful materials have to be ingested to have negative effects on health and if I remember correctly some are related to being heated. Also more recently the issue has been with paint which is absent from most cubes anyway. Point being I think we're fine especially seeing as Mattel is pretty obviously going for a lower price rather than quality.
 
ZamHalen said:
I want to be so sarcastic with this one but I'll hold off on that in case this thread really gets out of hand.

I wouldn't be too concerned seeing as most of the harmful materials have to be ingested to have negative effects on health and if I remember correctly some are related to being heated. Also more recently the issue has been with paint which is absent from most cubes anyway. Point being I think we're fine especially seeing as Mattel is pretty obviously going for a lower price rather than quality.
Click to expand...

Large companies we consider "trustworthy" have been exposed for manufacturing toys containing lead and other toxic materials/chemicals. All of these companies manufacture their toys in China. Examples include:

Mattel - it sold toxic dolls such as Barbies http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/05/news/companies/cpsc/
Marvel - dangerous levels of lead detected in the paints they used http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Recalls/2008/...Lead-Exposure/

Time and time again studies have shown that a large percentage of toys coming from China include harmful and toxic materials. You can read this study for more information:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/n...cadmium-mattel

I've searched but cannot find any guarantees from Moyu, Dayan, Shengshou that they do NOT use these harmful materials in any of their products. Usually, there is a warning label attached or other information on the product itself. I would like to find out if their cubes are safe.

Did you read the last article I posted, from globalpost regarding the Greenpeace-IPEN study? To quote from the article
The toys — even some made by reputable manufacturers — also tested positive for lead, antimony, arsenic, cadmium, chromium and mercury, which can cause permanent damage to a child's nervous and immune systems after entering the body through the skin or mucous membranes, or through the air.

So it is not only paint and ingestion that is the issue, it is the plastic and the substances used to manufacture the toys.
 
abs, pvc and vinyl are not toxic to touch. the puzzles are not painted. plastics are generally toxic to eat or smoke as the are petro-chemicals.
The bpa's in the ink on some heat based inks used in store cashier tills are readily absorbed through the skin but those aren't the inks used to colour the vinyl as they don't smear or fade.

If you took your cubes and placed them in a bottle of drinking water and left them out in the sun I would surmise that you could create a product that would cause an effect that could be measured with a sensitive enough blood test. Would the dosage of poisons incurred result in a toxic effect all by itself? Likely not.
 
Artic said:
Large companies we consider "trustworthy" have been exposed for manufacturing toys containing lead and other toxic materials/chemicals. All of these companies manufacture their toys in China. Examples include:

Mattel - it sold toxic dolls such as Barbies http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/05/news/companies/cpsc/
Marvel - dangerous levels of lead detected in the paints they used http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Recalls/2008...-By-Marvel-Toys-Due-to-Risk-of-Lead-Exposure/

Time and time again studies have shown that a large percentage of toys coming from China include harmful and toxic materials. You can read this study for more information:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/...de-china-lead-antimony-arsenic-cadmium-mattel

I've searched but cannot find any guarantees from Moyu, Dayan, Shengshou that they do NOT use these harmful materials in any of their products. Usually, there is a warning label attached or other information on the product itself. I would like to find out if their cubes are safe.
Click to expand...

So even the largest and most popular products from the largest companies aren't safe. Do you trust non-chinese cubes like the Rubik's brand cubes or Meffert's? With your logic i should just burn all of my puzzles, or anything i own that came from a factory for that matter. I'm don't mean for that to come off as rude but technically no company can be trusted, so you might as well take the risk and grab some nice shengshou and moyu puzzles instead.
 
Artic said:
Large companies we consider "trustworthy" have been exposed for manufacturing toys containing lead and other toxic materials/chemicals. All of these companies manufacture their toys in China. Examples include:

Mattel - it sold toxic dolls such as Barbies http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/05/news/companies/cpsc/
Marvel - dangerous levels of lead detected in the paints they used http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Recalls/2008/...Lead-Exposure/

Time and time again studies have shown that a large percentage of toys coming from China include harmful and toxic materials. You can read this study for more information:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/n...cadmium-mattel

I've searched but cannot find any guarantees from Moyu, Dayan, Shengshou that they do NOT use these harmful materials in any of their products. Usually, there is a warning label attached or other information on the product itself. I would like to find out if their cubes are safe.

Did you read the last article I posted, from globalpost regarding the Greenpeace-IPEN study? To quote from the article
The toys — even some made by reputable manufacturers — also tested positive for lead, antimony, arsenic, cadmium, chromium and mercury, which can cause permanent damage to a child's nervous and immune systems after entering the body through the skin or mucous membranes, or through the air.

So it is not only paint and ingestion that is the issue, it is the plastic and the substances used to manufacture the toys.
Click to expand...

I apologize you are correct I was just admitted to the local emergency room after a rather long cubing session today and am now near death.

In all seriousness though waffle's post is the perfect way to sum it all up. Do you happen to remember the the big deal that was made a few years back with apple juice? It was found that apple juice contained trace amounts of arsenic and the media ran with it, urging people to not drink apple juice when, in all reality, the amounts found were harmless. This proved to be sensationalism at it's best because it being not harmful wouldn't sell that much. ( And I understand this is a weird analogy but I find it relevant).

I find it highly unlikely that our speedcubes will have long lasting effects on our health, but being a musician I can't guarantee anything given my lack of education in this matter. But you in all your wisdom and your articles obviously know much more than all of us here.



EDIT: It appears that Waffle's post has been removed though it is quite relevant to this discussion. The point was that the amount of poison changes the need for worry. I.E. small amounts of arsenic won't kill you or even have adverse effects, but in large amounts you're as good as dead.
 
Last edited:
Most reports of harmful toys out of China is for lead in the paints. I haven't seen any reports of any products that are harmful because of the plastic.

Also, the health risk is pretty much entirely limited to small children. If you are no longer a toddler, and you are not pregnant, there shouldn't be any risk to you. We should, of course, still be worried about the issue, but again, I don't think there is anything to worry about regardless.
 
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