If you’ve ever bought something for your body without checking what it was made of, you’re not alone. Product pages lead with speeds, modes and power. The material is usually a line near the bottom, if it’s listed at all.
That line matters more than most people realize.
What everyone was told
The standard advice on caring for a personal massager is short: wash it after use. Soap and water, or a dedicated cleaner, and you’re done. Material, when it comes up at all, gets treated as a matter of feel or price.
It’s easy to see where that advice came from. Washing is the obvious step, and it’s the one everyone can do. For most of the history of these products, nobody had tested whether washing was enough, or whether it worked equally well on every surface.
That question finally got a test in 2014.
The inversion
Researchers at Indiana University asked 12 women to use two vibrators on separate occasions. One was made of silicone. The other was made of thermoplastic elastomer, a softer material that is porous at a microscopic level. Swabs were taken from each vibrator right after use, right after cleaning it with a commercially available cleaner, and again 24 hours later.
Among the women who had HPV, the virus was detected on the shaft of both vibrators most of the time before cleaning. Right after cleaning, it was still detected on about half of the samples from each one: 56% for the porous vibrator and 44% for silicone. A day later, the results split. None of the silicone samples carried detectable HPV, while some of the porous samples still did.
The study was small, the two vibrators differed in shape as well as material, and it measured whether viral DNA could be detected rather than whether anyone was infected. It’s a signal, not a verdict. The signal points in one direction, though: cleaning reduces what’s left on a surface, and the material decides whether what’s left can linger.
Think of the difference between a glass and a sponge. You can rinse both. Only one of them can hold onto what you were trying to rinse away.
Anderson et al., Sexually Transmitted Infections, 2014
What this means in real life
It means “body-safe” isn’t marketing filler. A non-porous material, such as silicone, glass, stainless steel and other metals, or hard ABS plastic, has a surface that cleaning can fully reach. Porous materials, often sold as “jelly” or “realistic” or simply left unlabeled, have tiny spaces that cleaning can’t reach.
It also means that cleaning right away isn’t the whole routine. Drying matters, and so does time. In the study, the silicone samples went from detectable to undetectable over a day, which is consistent with letting a piece dry completely before you put it away.
Sharing deserves a little more care than most advice gives it. If a piece is used by more than one person, a barrier such as a condom over it adds protection that cleaning alone may not provide.
There’s one more reason material matters. Some soft plastics are made flexible with additives called phthalates, which many people prefer to avoid. Materials that don’t need softening additives in the first place sidestep that question entirely.
None of this is cause for alarm. It’s the kind of practical knowledge that turns a vague worry into a simple habit, and it’s the kind of detail that product pages rarely put first.
What actually helps
Check the material before anything else. Look for silicone, glass, metal or ABS plastic, and if a product doesn’t say what it’s made of, there’s your answer.
Skip anything with a strong smell. A chemical odor out of the box is a warning sign, not something to air out.
Match the lubricant to the material. Silicone pieces are safest with water-based lubricant, because silicone-based formulas can degrade some of them, while glass and metal work with any type.
Clean after every use. Use a dedicated cleaner or mild, unscented soap and warm water, and follow the maker’s instructions for anything with a motor.
Let each piece dry fully before you store it, ideally apart from your other pieces.
Use a barrier whenever a piece is shared.
The cleaners we carry are in Care & accessories, and our wands are in Wands. Whatever you buy, look for the material line on the product page first.
Close
Speed and power get the biggest type on the box. The material decides whether a piece stays body-safe for as long as you own it.
Read what it’s made of first.
