Are glass sex toys safe?

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Glass sex toys, undoubtfully, are different from the other dildos, anal plugs and stimulators. Good-looking, nicely heavy, highly responsive to temperature, of any color and shape, they appeal for admiration and induce sex drive.

They are made of glass, though. This stuff, by its definition, is considered to be fragile. Isn't it dangerous to use glass toys for the purpose intended? The  bloggers of funnycouple have taken this point seriously. Here we post what they told their readers.

 In the mayority of cases, sex toys are made of borosilicate glass. This is a nice material, used for making dishes, mirrors, lenses, costume jewellery, fine jewellery and a long list of other products. The glass is exposed to heat tempering to increase its mecanical strength. Here is the most interesting part.

During the heat tempering the glass is treated similarly to metal. They are both intensely heated and immediately cooled down. Such glass is impossible to brake down, unless intended, and it is ten times stronger than the common glass. So, breaking it with a hamper is not an easy task. The authors were throwing the dildo from the kitchen table's height against the tile floor-no damage made. But, there is always a flaw...

If the tempered glass is scratched or hit precisely at the critical point, related to the residual stress, such glass is broken down into pieces, exploding with a thousand tiny shards! It is worth mentioning that these shards are not sharp, they are quite impossible to cut with, but who wants to have broken glass inside the body?

To take the residual stress off, the process of annealing is used: the glass is heated and cooled down once again, this time slowly and, as a result, the risk of explosion is excluded. How do you know if the toy ever passed through annealing? Well, it is easy to detect the residual stress using polarized light. The authors found a curious way to get such type of light at home. For this sake, they used a polarized tape, that a LCD display contains. They dismantled an old non-working display, took the tape off the screen and washed it to remove glue stains. Its capability to emit polarized light was tested with another, well-functioning, LCD display. If the glass is placed on the screen, the image is pretty clear, but if the glass is turned 90 degrees, the image goes black and non-transparent. With a white background on the screen, and with a glass item placed between the screen and the glass, the black glass with have this item reflected on it. The slider shows how items made of glass look like on this screen. The rainbows inside them is a sign of the residual stress within their shell. Such toys are tempered, but they never passed through annealing.

Here is the summary the bloogers draw out of this experiment.

Is that bad? Not exactly. The residual stress is the basis of the tempered glass, such stress is not an accident.

Is that dangerous? Yes, it is. The residual stress in the common glass implies a risk of a shard being broken off the shell at the very place such stress is centered. The residual stress means a sudden risk to find oneself deprived of the toy but full of glass hards inside the body.

Will we continue using such toys? We are likely to. But we are going to study them carefully for scrathes.

In conclusion, the authors recommend their readers that they should test their glass toys for the residual stress' presence. If there is no such stress, it means the object was exposed to annealing and hides no substantial risk. If the stress is present, your toy needs specific storage conditions to evoid being scratched.

By the way, you needn't hunt non-working displays to test your toy. In case you've got polarized sunglasses or a lens filter for your camera, you can merely use the monitor and look at it through the sunglasses or the filter.

The toys with residual stress require careful examination for scratches. If they've got some, do not hesitate to send your toy to the cupboard. Let it be a decoration!