Claim:
The Lego Group added barium sulfate to Lego bricks so they would show up on X-rays if swallowed.
Rating:
Context
A spokesperson for the Lego Group confirmed via email that “LEGO® bricks do not, and never have, contained any materials (either intentionally or not) to make them visible in an X-ray.”
A rumor has circulated online since at least April 2020 that the Lego Group added barium sulfide, a chemical compound that shows up well in X-rays, to Lego bricks as a safety precaution in case children swallow them.
The claim spread on social media platforms such as Facebook (archived) and Reddit (archived). One Instagram post (archived) explained more about what led to the alleged addition of the compound and the effect the change supposedly had. The caption read, in part:
In 2013, LEGO quietly made a change that saved children’s lives. They added barium sulfate to every brick. A heavy white mineral used in medical imaging. Parents barely noticed. But doctors? They knew exactly what it meant. Before this, when kids swallowed LEGO pieces, X-rays couldn’t detect them. Plastic is invisible to radiology… Since then, pediatric hospitals report faster surgeries and lower complication rates. Radiologists can now identify swallowed bricks in seconds.
While it is true that barium sulfate shows up well in X-ray imaging, there was no evidence the Lego Group ever considered adding the compound to its products. A spokesperson for the Lego Group confirmed via email that “LEGO® bricks do not, and never have, contained any materials (either intentionally or not) to make them visible in an X-ray.” As such, we have rated the claim as false.
Another related rumor circulating the internet held that the Lego Group decided not to add barium sulfate to its bricks after finding it made the plastic brittle. This also was false.
Are Lego bricks health hazards?
An article, “Lego Asthma,” published in the peer-reviewed New England Journal of Medicine, highlighted the case of a young boy who swallowed a Lego piece. Researchers tested how similar pieces showed up in an X-ray, and found that they “were radiolucent,” meaning the rays passed through them. This conclusion was consistent with findings in other studies. In one case, researchers were able to identify a Lego piece in X-ray imaging thanks to a “distinctive row of radiolucent air densities” even when the piece wasn’t directly visible.
Although people should avoid swallowing Legos, such objects don’t pose much risk once in the digestive tract, so they aren’t much of a threat beyond a choking hazard. In the aforementioned cases where Legos were causing health issues, the majority of them were not immediately life-threatening and could be completely solved through removal.
The spokesperson for the Lego Group emphasized that product safety is of the utmost importance to the company. It complies to standards like “age grading, warnings that the products are not suitable for children under 3 when small parts are included, what materials can and can’t be used, not having sharp edges or points, and much more.”
For further reading, Snopes investigated the claim that an X-ray authentically showed hundreds of bubble-tea pearls inside a teenage girl’s stomach.
