‘Non-Toxic’ Labels on Water Beads Are Meaningless

In his tests, the CPSC engineer put multiple samples of 14 water bead products through a process that mimicked their journey through a human digestive system, then measured the levels of acrylamide that the beads had released. In most samples, the chemical was detected, and two of the beads released “concerning levels.” The letter did not indicate which brands were tested, or what the levels of acrylamide were. The CPSC did not respond to an interview request.

For one parent advocate, this new information, while incomplete, is vindicating. Ashley Haugen says her daughter Kipley suffered both short- and long-term health effects after ingesting water beads without her parents’ knowledge years ago. Kipley, then 13 months old, went to the hospital with mysterious symptoms in July 2017. An exploratory surgery eventually revealed water bead material that had lodged in her intestine. 

Haugen came to believe that her daughter had ingested them as much as three months earlier, when her sister received them as a birthday gift. This long period of exposure worried her, but, she says, the attending doctors had dismissed her fears at the time, because they saw that the toy was labeled “non-toxic.” 

In CR’s investigation, we found that it’s very common for water bead packages and online descriptions to describe the toy this way, which safety advocates say is misleading to consumers—especially given the unique risks posed by super-expanding water beads.

“Companies aren’t supposed to call a product ‘non-toxic’ unless they have ‘competent and reliable scientific evidence’ that it is non-toxic both for humans and the environment generally,” says CR’s associate director of safety policy, William Wallace. “But this isn’t well enforced, leaving many ‘non-toxic’ claims unregulated.”

“‘Non-toxic’ is a meaningless label, and parents are relying on that,” Haugen says. “I know we did.”

In the months that followed Kipley’s surgery, Haugen says, she noticed changes in her daughter’s behavior and abilities. Kipley was no longer responding to her name, and her verbal skills were regressing. In the years since, she has continued to experience delays, her mother says. Kipley’s developmental pediatrician would eventually diagnose her with toxic encephalopathy, a type of brain injury, saying that it was likely due to toxic ingredients in the water beads. After researching the chemistry involved in making water beads’ superabsorbent polymers, Haugen wondered if acrylamide was the culprit.

In the years since Kipley’s injury, Haugen has become an outspoken educator about the risks posed by water beads and has advocated for water beads being banned from the market. She runs an educational nonprofit, That Water Bead Lady. She organizes other parents whose children have been injured to meet with lawmakers and regulators on this issue. In particular, Haugen has raised the otherwise-ignored issue of acrylamide toxicity and pushed for research and testing, with pediatric groups, with poison control centers, and with CPSC commissioners. 

“On the one hand I feel vindicated, because I’ve been saying for years that there is a poison that is inside these beads,” Haugen says. “But I can’t express how much I wanted to be wrong. I’m thinking about all the other kids who have gotten hurt—we really do not know what the long-term implications are going to be.”