To let my baby play with my keys

[CantThinkOfAGoodUserName]

9 month old baby, my baby as I'm sure all babies do, loves keys...
Plastic teething ones just don't do it for her the way real ones do for obviously jangly reasons.
But now I am told not to let her play with keys as they contain lead.
I was thinking MN will either tell me to stop being so precious OR that I'm bad mumma for even letting her look at my keys!
I'm hoping that someone might give a suitable alternative??

No wouldn't let them play with keys. They aren't toys and are dirty.

We let DD1 play with keys.... at least, until she slobbered all over them, and destroyed the car clicker.

I used to let them, until I saw a horrific news story about a toddler playing with a set of keys and falling on them. The car key went straight through his eye pretty much to his brain. By some miracle he survived and 'only' lost the sight in his eye.

I know that's a freak accident but I haven't let them have keys since.

I wouldn't but only because dc1 (now 13) managed to dribble so much into my friend's car key it (harmlessly to dc1) short circuited and stopped working

YABU.

But I base this mainly on the experience of a friend who let her DD play with her keys - until her DD wandered off with them and lost them. She said it cost an arm and a leg to get the car keys replaced. The original set of keys turned up in the bottom of a toybox about 18 months later.

Any other worries of mine would have been more about the sharp pointy nature of them rather than lead poisoning.