[mibbiting]

I bought some years ago, and had fun playing with them with my children. If you need a warning saying that eating a magnet is dangerous, you're not very clever.

And if your child (Lets say over the age of 3) is still eating random non-food items without checking with you, then you're not doing a great parenting job.

Don't you think the whole "put a warning sticker on everything" is getting a bit ridiculous?

[mejari]

>And if your child (Lets say over the age of 3) is still eating random non-food items without checking with you, then you're not doing a great parenting job.

That's just plain ridiculous. No amount or quality of parenting will prevent a child from occasionally doing something stupid, any more than it will prevent an adult from the same.

[jlgaddis]

a.k.a. Darwinism

[mejari]

Which we accept as the natural form of evolution, but wholly reject continuing to act without recourse on our species. Unless you also dislike any medicine or safety measures.

[anigbrowl]

OK but where does it end? Every time you strike a match you could start a fatal fire, but it would obviously be absurd to require people to take a safety class every time they strike a match. We settle for putting a generic warning on boxes of matches instead. Likewise you can buy gasoline and propane at the gas station without having to go through any bureaucracy, because it's assumed that responsible individuals know fire is dangerous and that refined fuels are highly-combustible, so as long as there are some warning signs up to remind people of the fact then the public interest is considered to have been served. And sure enough, millions of people buy and consume gasoline every day without injury despite the high risk potential.

Please stop offering false dichotomies like 'status quo (even when it's failing) or no regulation at all.'

[mejari]

>Please stop offering false dichotomies

as opposed to your slippery-slope "where does it end?" argument?

Unless you think that there should be no regulations at all, you agree that there is some line before which there should be regulations and after it there shouldn't, so "where does it end" is an actual discussion to have, not a non-sequitor to end the conversation like you're using it.

[anigbrowl]

Oh no. you said 'Unless you also dislike any medicine or safety measures.' I asked you where the line of demarcation was for acceptable safety measures, and gave some examples for context, which is a totally legitimate question.

It was not a non-sequitur at all. I want an answer.

[cookiecaper]

I believe that most people would probably assume that it's similar to eating a coin or other small piece of non-sharp metal -- it's not good, but it's generally not potentially life-threatening.

If you spend a little bit of time thinking about how strong magnets can probably attract each other through internal tissue, the risk makes sense, but it doesn't seem like something that's obvious, at least not to me.

This is one circumstance where awareness/warning labels are really useful, but unfortunately we hear so many frivolous warnings people are not likely to take them seriously. Everyone should know that these contraptions were literally banned at one point for the risk they pose to children, and the disclaimers encountered are not just generic CYA, but representative of a real risk to small children that has a real body count.

Like the GP, I'm glad that these are legal in the United States again, but we should not take the issue of informing parents of the risk involved with these toy-like objects lightly.

A similar issue is being posed by the small watch batteries included in many children's toys and remote controls these days. Children swallow these and they burn holes in their organs that result in serious disabilities. It's important that parents be aware of such non-obvious environmental dangers.

[cmiles74]

Small watch batteries are an interesting example, I don't recall seeing any warning stickers on these toys or their packaging. Perhaps something is buried in the back of an instruction manual, but that would be obviously ineffective.

[mibbiting]

The more dangerous case is those watch batteries are included in some greetings cards which play music or a recorded message etc. Very young kids can easily chew on a greetings card which isn't going to hurt them, but they may now swallow a battery as well, which may hurt them.

[makomk]

The main line of defence against kids swallowing button batteries is childproof battery compartments on most items that use them.

[TeMPOraL]

> If you need a warning saying that eating a magnet is dangerous, you're not very clever.

Of course you can't prevent every idiot from doing something stupid. But some things are dangerous in an non-obvious way. It's pretty obvious you can choke on small objects. It's not obvious that eating one small magnet is fine, but eating a second one after a while can kill you.

[anigbrowl]

Nobody disputes that, but a) once it has been explained via a warning, why should responsibility remain with the manufacturer, and b) once someone of ordinary intelligence plays with the magnets and sees how strong they are then it is obvious. Neodymium magnets will pinch your fingertip painfully if you're not careful. If it can hurt your finger it could hurt other parts of your body.

[mibbiting]

I agree. I don't know why some people act as if it's astounding and something you would never think of - that swallowing magnets can be pretty dangerous.

[pavel_lishin]

> If you need a warning saying that eating a magnet is dangerous, you're not very clever.

I don't think non-clever parents ought to be punished via their children. That seems a little Old Testament biblical.

> Don't you think the whole "put a warning sticker on everything" is getting a bit ridiculous?

That's pretty good late 90's standup material, but I'm not sure if it's factually supported. Are there too many stickers? Are they effective or not effective at preventing harm? Do they incur more costs than the harm they prevent?

[anigbrowl]

Non-clever parents don't deserve to be punished, but nor do the rest of us deserve to permanently obstructed by rules designed for the least competent members of society.

I argue that there are too many stickers, that they become less effective through profusion, and that in some cases the cost does exceed the benefit. For example, in California a 1986 ballot initiative called Proposition 65 mandates that businesses put up a sign on any building that contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer. Unfortunately this definition is very vague, since many common chemicals can be carcinogenic in sufficient quantities. As a result, virtually every business in California displays a sign warning that the building contains cancer-causing chemicals, completely obviating the utility of warning the public about hazards because it's impossible to distinguish what the actual level of risk is. There doesn't seem to be any evidence of the signage provision actually helping in any way, but it's been a goldmine for signmakers and attorneys who file nuisance lawsuits over the non-display of these useless signs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_65_(198...

Note that I'm not arguing against regulation here, I'm arguing against ineffectual regulation whose discernable costs exceed the discernable benefit.

[mibbiting]

I would say that when you buy an inflatable pool ring, if more of the area of the pool ring is taken up by warning messages, than isn't, then we've gone too far.

So yes, I think we've gone too far.

[Pica_soO]

Warning: Heavy handbooks, containing whole chapters with warnings and disclaimers can cause severe backpain.

[cmiles74]

Stickers or labeling on packaging sounds pretty inexpensive and straightforward. For sure, too many stickers and labels turns into noise but I would argue that we aren't there yet, most of the toys I purchase for my children are relatively bereft of warnings.

[DanBC]

> Don't you think the whole "put a warning sticker on everything" is getting a bit ridiculous?

These magnets hospitalised over a thousand children, and killed at least one.

[mibbiting]

Those statistics are meaningless without comparison.

How many children are hospitalized/die from swallowing coins or lego?

Do we need warning labels on coins?

How many kids are hospitalized/die from swallowing batteries? I'd bet it's a lot more than magnets, and batteries can be pretty lethal.

[pbhjpbhj]

http://www.hassandlass.org.uk/ shows for 2002 that there were ~320 cases of magnet injuries (nature unspecified) in home/leisure scenarios vs. ~12000 coin injuries.

However that doesn't help us much. Strong magnets are far more prevalent now and the specific toys that caused most injuries weren't around in the UK, I think (?), back then.

Moreover, that probably makes magnet injuries per item in the home massively outweigh coin injuries.

I looked for EU IDB stats too but didn't get anywhere, my starting source was http://www.rospa.com/resources/statistics/ which lists some other potential data sources at the bottom.

[edmccard]

>How many kids are hospitalized/die from swallowing batteries?

For button batteries:

poison.org[1] lists 54 fatalities since 1977; the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia has a page [2] that mentions "Fifteen children have died — 11 of them within the last six years" but it isn't clear when exactly that page was published.

[1]http://www.poison.org/battery/fatalcases

[2] http://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/kohls-injury-prevention...