Is it safe to buy secondhand kids' plastic toys from a garage sale?
Use caution. Skip older painted, soft, sticky, or mouthed plastic toys for babies and toddlers.
What's actually in it
Garage sale toys can be fine when they are newer, clean, and easy to identify. The risky group is older painted toys, imported toys with no safety label, toy jewelry, soft PVC bath toys, and sticky or crumbling plastic.
Lead is the hard stop. CDC says imported, antique, and older toys can contain lead. It also says toys made before 2009 can contain more lead because the 2008 law lowered lead limits for children's products.
What the research says
A 2023 review in Reviews on Environmental Health found lead, cadmium, arsenic, BPA, phthalates, and other contaminants in children's toys and jewelry across multiple countries.
A 2025 Chemosphere study tested 162 children's products in artificial saliva. BPA and related bisphenols migrated from some products, with higher migration from items made for direct mouth contact.
For babies and kids under 3, skip secondhand plastic unless you know it is recent, recall-free, not PVC, and not damaged. Choose solid wood toys from known brands, then wash them before use.