We have spent decades trying to remove lead from the walls surrounding children. Far less attention has been paid to the objects we place directly in their hands. Lead is a potent neurotoxin with no safe level of exposure, and young children are especially vulnerable due to frequent hand-to-mouth behavior, made riskier by the fact that lead can have a faintly sweet taste.
The global movement to end childhood lead poisoning has rightly focused on paint. CGD's own research has documented how rich countries continue exporting lead chromate pigment to poor countries, and how inadequate regulations allow lead paint to persist. But there is another exposure route that receives far less attention, despite being equally preventable: toys.
One in three children globally has elevated blood lead levels. A significant and underappreciated share of that burden could come not from the toys in children's hands. Lead is one of the most well-documented neurotoxins known to science. Even low levels of exposure can cause irreversible damage to a developing brain, reducing IQ, impairing attention and impulse control, and affecting language development, with consequences that follow a child into adulthood.
The World Health Organization has long listed toys alongside paint, ceramics, and jewelry as documented sources of childhood lead exposure, yet toy-specific regulations lag far behind paint regulations in most countries. This includes many that have otherwise taken lead seriously.
How large is the contribution of toys to the global lead burden?
No precise estimate exists, but the available evidence points to something far from trivial. Seventy percent of the world's toys are imported from China, where a 2016 Greenpeace and IPEN investigation found that one in ten toys contained high levels of lead. Studies in low- and middle-income countries consistently find between 10 and 40 percent of toys in circulation exceeding national safety thresholds. A systematic review of 39 source attribution studies across 26 countries flagged toys as an understudied exposure source, with their contribution to children's blood lead levels poorly understood and underresearched. A study in Shanghai found that playing with plastic toys is a statistically significant independent risk factor for elevated blood lead levels in children. With 800 million children globally carrying blood lead levels high enough to cause serious harm, toys are almost certainly meaningfully contributing to that burden, even if the precise share remains unmeasured. Quantifying it should be a research priority.
China dominates the world's toy market, and the evidence of contamination travels with the supply chain. The problem does not stop at the US or European border. As recently as fall 2025, a recall was issued in the US for toys exceeding the federally allowable lead threshold—and it is among the countries best equipped to catch it. In low- and middle-income countries, where regulatory capacity is thinner and enforcement rarer, the same toys circulate with far less scrutiny. In Colombia, a peer-reviewed study found lead in toy paint in Bogotá reaching up to 47,600 ppm, more than 500 times the US regulatory limit. Honduras's consumer protection authority seized children's toys on suspicion of lead contamination from stores in Tegucigalpa and Comayagüela in early 2025. Peru's health authority has repeatedly found lead levels more than 13 times above the legal threshold in toys seized from Lima markets, yet as recently as December 2025 they continued circulating freely. Brazil and Nepal tell the same story: studies in both countries found lead in a significant share of toys tested, well above permitted thresholds. The EU's Safety Gate flagged over 600 toy alerts in 2024 alone.
Countries with documented findings span every region, including Europe's formal recall systems, Latin America and the Caribbean’s regulatory actions, and market studies across South and Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Absence of data in other countries is not evidence of safety. It is evidence of a surveillance gap.
The informal economy makes this harder to see and harder to address. Across low- and middle-income countries, a significant share of toys change hands outside formal retail entirely, through street vendors, open-air markets, and informal traders. Regulating what happens inside those markets is notoriously difficult. But that is precisely why upstream interventions matter so much. Stopping lead-contaminated toys at the border, or preventing their import in the first place, reduces the supply that flows into those markets. Recall systems and retail inspections reach formal commerce. Border controls and import standards are among the few tools that can reach the informal economy too.
The rise of e-commerce is compounding the problem. Large retailers based in China have become major toy suppliers globally at a speed that has outpaced any regulatory response. According to the European Commission, 4.6 billion small parcels from China reached the EU last year alone, roughly 12 million per day, double the previous year and three times the 2022 figure, with the vast majority ordered through large e-commerce platforms. Much of this goes unchecked: a joint investigation by consumer associations in France, Belgium, Germany, and Denmark tested 54 toys purchased from Chinese platforms and found that only one complied with European safety norms. In the US, products sold exclusively online were twice as likely to violate federal safety standards as those sold in physical stores. In countries with weaker regulatory infrastructure, these toys arrive with no oversight whatsoever.
Three things that need to change
First, lead regulations must explicitly cover toys, not just paint. Too many countries have enacted lead paint regulations without corresponding toy-specific bans. The Global Alliance to Eliminate Lead Paint has a real opportunity to extend its mandate, making toy-specific bans as central to its agenda as paint.
Second, import surveillance must be resourced as a public health function—the problem is findable, if someone is looking.
Third, e-commerce platforms must bear importer-level liability for the products they sell. The EU's General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR), which came into force in December 2024, points the way. Before it, platforms could argue they were merely connecting buyers and sellers, with no legal responsibility for product safety. The GPSR closes that loophole: online marketplaces must now ensure that products listed on their platforms are traceable to an identifiable responsible party, must remove dangerous products within two working days of a safety alert, and must have systems in place to prevent banned products from reappearing. Critically, this obligation applies to all products sold to EU consumers, including those shipped directly from China. Most countries have no equivalent framework, which is why the same toys removed from European platforms continue circulating freely elsewhere. Extending this model globally, through bilateral trade agreements, World Trade Organization frameworks, or domestic legislation, would shift the burden of proof from overwhelmed customs agencies to the platforms that profit from the trade.
Conclusion
The global momentum around lead poisoning is real. The Partnership for a Lead-Free Future, with its goal of eliminating childhood lead poisoning by 2040 and over $150 million mobilized at launch, represents a historic shift in political attention and financing. But for that momentum to fully protect children, toys must be part of the conversation, in national action plans, in international frameworks, and in the regulatory agenda.
If there is one product category that should be held to the highest safety standard, it is toys. Children do not choose what they play with. And yet toys remain one of the least regulated vectors of lead exposure in much of the world. That should not be an afterthought. Addressing it will require deliberate, coordinated effort, but it starts with recognizing toys as the serious regulatory gap they are.
