You’ve probably heard about the fidget spinner craze if you aren’t living in a cave. The gadget is made with ballbearing and blades on both sides inside a plastic casing which spins when touched and are all the rage right now. However, after investigating the phenomenon, the casing and gadget itself contains dangerous levels of lead and mercury.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to all fidget spinners, but as the gadget doesn’t have a patent it’s hard to recognize the quality ones from those that are Chinese. Last week, European police seized 200 000 fidget spinners that failed to adhere to the health standard in the EU.

Here’s what Tamara Rubin, an anti-lead activist said: “Two were lead-free, but one had very high levels of lead and some mercury. She then disassembled a fidget spinner with LED lights and found both lead and mercury. She found 19,000 parts per million (ppm) of lead and 1,000 ppm of mercury.”

The allowed level of lead in children’s toys is 90 ppm, which makes these findings problematic. Both the painted and unpainted base of the gadget contained highly dangerous lead and mercury levels. Later, Rubin tested 6 more spinners with 42800 ppm of lead. Of course, this isn’t publicly known as we don’t have access to the expensive testing machines.

As you can see, fidget spinners are not as harmless as they seem. They are often imported from China due to the low price, so parents should be vigilant when buying them for their children.