Asbestos in play sand: BfR summarises European testing — asbestos found in 40 of 106 products in the Netherlands
On 24 September 2026 the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) updated its communication on asbestos in play and craft sand. It compiles test results from several countries and endorses the Dutch and Belgian risk assessments: under worst-case assumptions — a child playing regularly for years with the same heavily contaminated free-flowing sand — a health risk may exist.
- In the Netherlands the NVWA tested 106 products: asbestos was found in 26 of 45 free-flowing decorative sands, 2 of 15 semi-cohesive modelling sands, 5 of 16 sandbox sands and 7 of 10 sand fillings of toys, and in none of the 20 fully cohesive modelling sands; six products contained more than 0.1 %.
- Other campaigns: asbestos was detected in 6 of 20 samples in Belgium, 1 of 12 toys in Finland and 10 of 22 products in a Stiftung Warentest test; Lower Saxony objected to 7 of 35 samples, while 38 official samples from North Rhine-Westphalia contained no asbestos.
- According to the BfR, identifying fibres with standardised, accredited methods is reliable, but quantifying the content carries large uncertainty — asbestos is often unevenly distributed in the material and results are frequently close to the detection limit; the Dutch contents were determined according to VDI 3866 Part 5, Annex B.
- The federal institute BAuA measured the dustiness of three samples with low, medium and high asbestos content in the laboratory: fibres were released from all of them, with release rates differing by more than two orders of magnitude; for the sample containing 0.24 % asbestos, the Belgian assessment cannot exclude a risk for children exposed over prolonged periods.