[yojo]

The one that recently shocked me was modeling clay. My elementary school kid loves playing with clay, so I bought him some Fimo, which is proudly marketed as “non-toxic.” On a lark I looked it up anyway. It’s 11-14% phthalates by weight![1]. All the polymer clays are necessarily high in it - they’re made by compositing clay, PVC, and plasticizers. Blew my mind, and we’re giving this stuff to kids!

[1] https://pirg.org/resources/hidden-hazards/

[beAbU]

You can make play dough at home by cooking a flour and water mixture till it thickens up, add lots of salt (to discourage eating) and colouring to taste.

When I was a child my mom would cook me a fresh batch every month or so during my frequent clay phases.

[cptskippy]

Polymer clay and modeling clay have very different properties compared to play dough. Play dough is something that kids grow out of in the first year or two of Elementary school.

[yojo]

Yep, my kid is into making very detailed little animal sculpts that endure. Playdough fails on both of those dimensions. We've switched to air dry clay (Crayola Model Magic), which is closer to the polymer clay, but still doesn't work quite as well for fine-detail, and is far less durable.

[beedeebeedee]

You can make modeling clay with dry clay and mineral oil (with some glycerin)

[yojo]

Do you have a recipe or resource you can point me to? I'd love to try it.

[beedeebeedee]

I don't sadly. I did it empirically (my oil-based modeling clay would separate and become hard, so I started heating it and adding oil, and then started making new modeling clay from scratch). I used clay powder, but I just looked at some websites for making homemade modeling clay and they use calcium carbonate or talc, so I'm not sure what to suggest. My clay turned out fine (but theirs might be better).

[irrational]

When I was a kid, they still allowed us to play with Mercury with our bare hands in elementary school.

[blipvert]

My dad gave mercury toys (tilt mazes with mercury blobs in, etc) to my siblings and I. And he was a chemistry teacher!

[daymanstep]

Elemental mercury isn't that toxic. It's the vapors that are dangerous.

[blipvert]

Fair point, but I still wouldn’t give my idiot 10yr old self that stuff.

He never did really understand me.

[Unbefleckt]

I had the original Warhammer figurines as a kid that my older brother didn't want. I remember bending the metal (I was maybe 4 or 5) and putting it in my mouth for some reason like I did with lego when I couldn't snap a piece off. I ended up swallowing a piece and vomiting up a bit of eldar soon after. Still have pleasant associations with the smell of lead thanks to warhammer.

[krustyburger]

Well, that seems safe enough. It’s the smallest planet, after all.

[mc32]

For the titans maybe but not for regular mortals.

[Aaronstotle]

My grandma grew up in Soviet Kyiv, she told me kids they would break thermometers and play with the mercury

[IshKebab]

I mean playing with small amounts of elemental mercury is pretty safe. Yeah it's toxic but if you play with it in your hands once or twice in your life nothing is going to happen.

Maybe not great for the teacher.

[criticalfault]

It reminds me of the DDT era, but corrupt...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUDVuugQmxE

People were probably ignorant when they were spraying kids with DDT. Today it's ignorance mixed with greed.