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Rare Earth Magnets Pose Threat To Children
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Many of today's toys contain rare-earth magnets which are much more powerful than the magnets of yesteryear and the magnets pose a serious threat to children when more than one is ingested because as the magnets attract one another they can cause a range of serious injuries, including holes through internal organs, blood poisoning and death (PDF). Braden Eberle, 4, swallowed two tiny magnets from his older brother's construction kit on two successive days last spring and his mother's first reaction was that the magnet would pass through her son's system without a problem. "People swallow pennies of the same size every day," said Jill Eberle. "They're smaller than an eraser." But next morning, with Braden still in pain, the family's doctor told them to go straight to the emergency room where an X-ray revealed two magnets were stuck together. "They were attracted to each other with the wall of each segment they were in stuck together," said Dr. Sanjeev Dutta, the pediatric surgeon at Good Samaritan Hospital who would operate on Braden later that day. "Because they were so powerful, the wall of the intestine was getting squeezed, squeezed, squeezed, and then it just necrosed, or kind of rotted away, and created a hole between the two." The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) says at least 33 children have been injured from ingesting magnets (PDF) with a 20 month-old dying, and at least 19 other children requiring surgery."
So, ask for them to be done medium?
Parents paying attention to their kids is the cure, not banning magnets...
These magnets come with clear warnings not to let kids eat them as they may become attached inside them. Seriously, is this article nothing more than a longer version of the warning that appears on the magnets themselves?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
These can be used to simulate a tongue piercing by placing one on the top of your tongue, and another below it. Obviously this leads to at least a few teenagers swallowing magnets as well.
This is well-known. Why is is news?
Bingo, I was going to say this too. Only thing I can think of in its defence is that as rare earth magnets (which pose the greatest risk purely due to their strength) have become more common as novelties recently- e.g. through stores such as ThinkGeek- this might be more of an issue than it was previously.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
The pdf says they are aware of a total of 33 injuries and one death in the US ever due to magnet ingestion. Out of a 300 million population that is a vanishingly small risk. Meanwhile there are something like 30,000 accidental poisonings each year. Are we really paying attention to the right things?
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
I think this somehow makes neodymium magnets seem even cooler. They've killed children... not by poisoning them, but by magnetism alone.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
33 children injured total is not a huge number. I think more children are injured by electrical outlets, knives, stoves, etc around the house each day. Parents need to watch their kids. The child in the summary would have had a lot less trouble if they had taken the kid to the doctor immediately; rather then waiting a few days. If the child is in pain they need to get the kid checked out asap. That being said there could be a warning in the box stating that swallowed magnets warrant a trip to the doctor, but I don't see why this a news fro nerd or really something that matters to most.
Not sure this news item posted on the right web site. Don't you think this is mission creep, timothy?
While I understand the incredulity of a nerd/geek having kids, there is yet a one-word simple answer... MAGNETS!
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
I agree that four years old is a bit young to be playing with rare earth magnets, but around the age of 6 I already knew better than to put anything like that into my mouth. Around that time I was playing in my grandpa's workshop (he used to work in refrigerator repair, and the place was full of scrap metal, scrap wood, small electric motors, MAGNETS *gasp* , hand tools, and lots of other cool stuff to play with.) Naturally, I quickly got fond of building things and tinkering with machines.
There was dangerous stuff in there (power tools and old cans of freon that he never got rid of for some reason) but he told me never to play with that and I was smart enough to listen. When he showed me what a table saw could do to a piece of scrap wood in under 2 seconds I quickly learned that I shouldn't put my finger there. The problem today is that we're treating kids who should be old enough for this stuff like toddlers. (mostly because people have turned into litigious bastards... true, they always were but it seems like it's gotten worse in the last decade or two) As a result, kids are way behind the curve on development than they were when I was growing up because their development is being stunted. If you took a typical sheltered kid from today and moved him back in time about 20 years, he would probably be considered slow and undeveloped.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
Or how about teaching your kids that you have to be careful with some things, or actually supervising them?
Parents who are too stupid to keep toys with small parts away from their kids on their own are also too stupid to read the warning labels.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Note that is of course also an issue for pets.
Absolutely. Have people learned nothing from the tale of the old woman who swallowed a fly? Ponies should come with warning labels.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
Did you take the plastic bags away at the same time?
All of my "rare-earth" magnets came with giant warnings that not only say "KEEP AWAY FROM ALL CHILDREN" but also "Keep away from nose and mouth. Do not swallow. If swallowed, seek emergency medical attention as magnets may stick together in the intestine, causing severe injury or death".
How could that be more clear?
Just tell your infant to only swallow one at a time. Problem solved!
The problem is not toy rare earth magnets, but rare earth magnets used in toys.
A magnet used as a locking device for the clasp of a book, magnets used in a toy train to hold them together, etc.
Just like lead paint, the substitution is not obvious.
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
I think a better comparison would be deaths (or injuries) compared to prevalence of the items in question. Of the 300,000,000 people in the US, only a small fraction live in an environment with access to rare earth magnets. But most, if not all, live in an environment where there are poisonous substances. Not to mention that according to the CDC, the overwhelming number of non-intentional poisonings are drug overdoses.
I'm not certain that we're talking about the same class of problems here.
The title is misleading. It makes one believe Rare Earth Magnets might pose a tactile toxic or radiative concern.
Rename it to "Rare Earth Magnets pose threat to children who ingest them" because otherwise you are wasting my time. My kid doesn't eat magnets and I've known about this hazard for a couple years.
This is not only OLD news, this is IRRELEVANT news to me that you misled me into re-reading.
"Rare Earth Magnets" should read "Negligent Parents".
I only buy pepper spray that's been tested on anti-vivisectionists.
Just heat the child up to above the Curie temperature of the magnets and they will fall right off!
A warning label which is not present on toy packaging. Children's toys which contain rare-earth magnets.
Did you try it with your intestines?
If I were to rob my child of the sheer joy of treating every object he comes into contact with as delicious, delicious candy, then what kind of parent would I be? Americans love to stuff things into our lard-holes. That's what makes us Americans, dammit!
Which would be about the time that magnets were no longer allowed in toys for small children, and Magnetix (toys for children that included magnets) were recalled and relabeled for age 6+. (This was an extension of the recall from 2006) Mattel then recalled their toys with magnets in the fall of 2007. ... etc.
Are we still having problems with this 5 years later?
Are we going to need to havea story on here next week that small items are a choking hazard and shouldn't be given to children under 3?
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Nearly 300 children drowned in their bath tub.
Nearly 60 drown in a 5 gallon buckets
Over 50 in a hot tub and 16 in toilets.
But of course we need new regulations for magnets.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
There is a certain assumption that when you give a child an age appropriate *toy* you can let the child play with the toy without direct supervision. If a parent's job is to literally watch every single thing their child does from playing with their toys to watching their Dora the Explorer videos, when precisely can said parent be expect to cook, eat, poop, or drive? I'm all for parental responsibility, and yes there are many times when a parent should be supervising a child; but really there have to be some activities that at least require a more passive form of supervision or nothing will ever get done. Surely playing with the child's own toys should be one of those times?
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Do you have children? If so have you managed to watch them every second of their lives.
We don't let them out of their locked cages that often.
Have gnu, will travel.
I believe chilli or chilli oil when used judiciously can teach children not to put just anything into their mouths, and to obey their parents when told to not put stuff in their mouths.
The "effective dose" of chilli is quite low compared to the toxic/harmful dose, so it's quite safe for such things. The kid might cry a lot, but after that they'll be more likely to believe dad or mom when they say "No!".
Could you come down off your 4-difit UID geek high-horse and for a picosecond entertain the idea that not everything is so easily controlled in a highly dynamic nonlinear multivariate system commonly referred to as a child-rearing household in a developed nation?
Raising children is hard (I say this as a mid-forties bachelor not living in my parents' basement), and I would never dare to presume that avoiding all accidents is possible regarding the welfare of a child. I'd doubly not dare to presume such if I were a parent.
Ignorant as I am, I at least know better than to cast smug blame on the parents of children who have undergone a medical emergency. For all that is good, please follow these steps:
blog
It doesn't matter how good of a teacher you are, your two-year old will still stick toys in his mouth.
It doesn't matter how observant a parent you are, there will still be moments where you look away.
I'm all for parental responsibility, and yes there are many times when a parent should be supervising a child; but really there have to be some activities that at least require a more passive form of supervision or nothing will ever get done. Surely playing with the child's own toys should be one of those times?
From the summary, "Braden Eberle, 4, swallowed two tiny magnets from his older brother's construction kit on two successive days last spring and his mother's first reaction was that the magnet would pass through her son's system without a problem. "
I certainly agree with you that passive supervision should be all that is required when a child is playing with their own age appropriate toys, in a "baby-proofed area". But if you plan on only passive supervision then you also have the responsibility to make sure the child does not have access to non-age appropriate items as well. In this case the child got a hold of his older brothers toys, on two separate occasions I might add. As a good parent you should also be reasonably versed on what is and isn't safe to eat. My daughter is 8 years old and I've known for longer than that, that there is a danger in swallowing powerful magnets.
Which isn't an issue so long as the magnets are well connected to something too big to swallow. If your kid's toys break into pieces small enough to put in their mouth it's time to throw them out.
No, the problem is that magnets are delicious.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
You mean there are no alternatives to locking devices for books or ways to hold trains together? I mean apart from the ones that were used before magnets were used.
The issue is not alternatives, the issue is price. That and the fact that kids will put stuff in their mouth and swallow it, no matter what. That is what kids do and that is why parents should not be putting them in front of a TV. Instead they must spend time with the kids.
You are a parent. That does not stop. EVER!
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Yeah, because we all know that children will only break their toys in front of their parents. Plus even if it was broken out of the parent's view we all know that children always show their parents the things they have broken immediately afterwords...
Your fingers are thick and durable. Small magnets at such distance isn't much of a risk. Put them on opposite sides of your nasal septum, and you'll have significantly more risk of bruising. Do that with weaker internal tissues, drag them along, and there's a good chance you will cause internal bleeding.
Did you take the plastic bags away at the same time?
I am fairly sure that it is standard practice to take plastic bags away from small children if they start playing with them, yes.
Here is a great video explaining how magnets will hurt you.
I believe chilli or chilli oil when used judiciously can teach children not to put just anything into their mouths, and to obey their parents when told to not put stuff in their mouths.
Does that work for Thai children too, or does it have the opposite effect?
This story comes from the Magnetix recall of 2006: "CPSC and Mega Brands are aware of one death, one aspiration and 27 intestinal injuries. Emergency surgical intervention was needed in all but one case." The toy was a construction set of plastic parts with small embedded magnets, usable by small children. The small magnets weren't embedded very well, apparently just pressed into recesses in the plastic, and came out easily. Mega Brands paid a $1.1 million fine for this.
but they certainly do instinctively understand
Not always. Some of them may even try to retaliate in other ways.
They're the assholes with the kids at restaurants screaming their heads off or running around stores like decapitated chickens and throwing seizure-like tantrums on the cereal aisle.
I'm sure they would do that if you hit them, too (perhaps not all of them). Because I've seen it happen. They just screamed even more. But that's just a generalization, anyway.
In any case, hitting someone isn't my preferred method of getting someone to listen to me. I wouldn't hit someone who disagreed with me, and I wouldn't hit a kid whose situation was effectively the same (the difference being that they supposedly can't understand).
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Or how about teaching your kids that you have to be careful with some things, or actually supervising them?
One of these tends to preclude the other. Kids need a certain amount of unsupervised, unstructured play. They need to break things they care about. They need to hurt themselves. They need to be nipped by a dog, burn their fingers, bang their head, and fall over... a lot. A small percentage of them will be seriously hurt, even killed, because of that. But if you reduce the percentage of serious harm too low, you also reduce the development of the child, causing a different kind of harm.
(There's apparently a saying in Norway, "a childhood without a broken arm is a wasted childhood.")
The answer to "Kid got hurt" isn't "Hey Parents, stop being so lazy and watch your fucking kids", the answer is, 'Yeah, that happens."
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
I've stripped those magnets out of hard drives many times and found no injury
YMMV. I've seen hard drive magnets that are quite safe, but I once opened a drive that had magnets so strong they were literally blown to pieces when they came near each other. I couldn't pry them apart with my fingers, when I used a screwdriver the steel plate that they were glued on came loose. I ended with a mess of magnet dust clung together in a lump.
No they don't. At least, not in the entire EU and certainly not for all toys. I just read an article about how the Dutch Food and Wares Safety Inspection holds a lot of inspections, specifically aimed at protecting children from bad toys. Most of the well known manufacturers are very afraid of having bad toys on sale, but a lot of smaller ones aren't equipped or motivated to check out all the stuff they buy externally themselves. So the Inspection does it for them. One of the things they look for is how easy it is to break up a toy. If it is easy enough to break it up, it has to be removed from the market if it breaks into bits smaller than will fit into the throat of a small child. And magnets were a point they especially looked for, given their lethality and the fact it is hard to notice for parents that something that small has gone missing.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
30 kids is one out of every TEN MILLION people in the U.S.
Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that parents should not pay attention to this issue, but 30 kids a year is NOTHING. Far far more die of bathtub accidents, but you don't see people making a big deal out of bathtubs.
It is 1,000 or more times more likely that the kid will get struck by lightning. Should you, therefore, force kids to carry around a lightning rod everywhere they go?
This is one of those "mis-perception of risk" things that you read about. There are much more important things in this world that need your attention.
37
Because the process of learning to be careful with some things takes time... Eventually your kids learn not to eat stuff like magnets, but it doesn't happen right away.While I'm all for kids learning through cuts, and bruises, and burns, I'd rather not have to take a kid to the hospital for something that they really can't be expected to understand.
Also, there's supervising a kid, and then there's locking a kid up in a padded room. Even if you keep an eye on a kid, you can't always protect them from every kind of trouble - and preventing a young child from swallowing small stuff falls into the 'near impossible' end of parenting skills - best you can do is make sure that there isn't anything seriously harmful around the kid, and not every parent in the world understands the danger of magnets. Stories like this help get the word out.
It's funny that there's a bit of a sadness on slashdot about the fact that kids aren't allowed to have fun with cool chemicals, wood burning kits, big jungle jims, and rusty fences... And then we turn around and see posts from people who probably aren't parents complaining that we aren't doing enough to keep our kids safe.
The chinese have embargoed Japan over a border dispute. They hare restricted export of raw rare earths because they want to retain manufacturing in China. They have not restricted export of toys, etc that contain rare earth magnets.
The reason to use rare earth magnets is that they are very strong compared to normal ferrous magnets. In construction sets such as this contain rare earth magnets. At each end of the bars is a rare earth magnet. They hold the steel spheres very strongly. A regular ferrous magnet will not work. There are even magnetic push pins that are used because they are strong enough to work through several layers of paper. Ever have a regular magnet fall of you fridge because you tried to put a few pieces of paper between it and the metal? That won't happen with rare earth magnets. They are also used in workshops to hold tools on the wall to keep them organized. Anywhere that strong magnets are used they are probably rare earth magnets. Despite their name they are not rare or special.