As the world continues to grow in its collective development towards awareness and enlightenment, more and more people are beginning to understand and appreciate the effect of the synthetic products that science has so easily made available to us for our own convenience. Ergo, we live in an age of plastics and silicone. There is enough plastic out there to kill us all and we still continue producing more and more synthetic material, as we tend to sacrifice health for comfort and ease. All of this is okay with us as long as it is all about us, but when it comes to our children, we need to sit up and think about what we are exposing our children to.

Children love their toys, and as we all know, they spend most of their active hours, and almost all of their inactive (sleeping) hours in the company of toys like teddy bears, balls, dolls and such. Therefore, it would be a good idea to have a long, hard look at the material that these toys are made out of, which most of the time, if not all of the time, is plastic and other such synthetic, man made material.

Plastics can leach out easily. Being made from petroleum, plastics are toxic to the human body, and therefore these plastic toys pose a potential threat especially in case of small children, who tend to put anything and everything they can lay their hands on, into their mouths. Sigmund Freud describes this stage of childhood as the oral stage, when a child is fascinated by the feel of things inside his or her mouth, and uses the mouth as a means of exploring most of the objects he or she may come across.

Synthetic dyes contain chemicals and metals, which may be absorbed through the skin or inhaled in the form of fumes. The infamous lead poisoning fracas due to the cheap Chinese toys which was recently in the news is a prime example of this harmful nature of anything that is synthetic.

Many companies are now producing organic toys. These toys are made of natural, recyclable and biodegradable materials like wood, organic cotton and such. Not only are these toys safe in terms of toxicity (or the lack of it, actually) but they are also environment friendly as they are easily disposed of and degraded during biological and natural processes. Therefore, health and environment go hand in hand.