Out of curiosity, did you read those case studies? In the two listed, the children swallowed a single magnet, which is actually not particularly dangerous. More problematic were the button batteries these children also swallowed. Do we ban button batteries also?
Also, is there much evidence of teens actually doing this and accidentally swallowing them? I have no doubt that teens are playing with the magnets in stupid ways, but how many teens have swallowed magnets this way and had complications? The CPSC claims its happening but provides no breakout stats for this.
Also also, I have serious doubts about the accuracy of the claims the CPSC is making. On the page I linked, they clam "22 reports of magnet incidents involving children between the ages of 18 months and 15 years old since June 2009" through Nov 2011 and provide a yearly breakout of all those reports. In the press release poison.org cites, they claim "CPSC staff estimates that small, high powered magnet sets were associated with 1,700 emergency room-treated injuries between 2009 and 2011." So they estimate two orders of magnitude higher than they actually have reports for?
I was referring specifically to the case studies listed on that page's sidebar.
Where did that 1300 number come from? I'm seeing so many random numbers for how often kids are swallowing magnets that I'm doubting the good faith of the CPSC now.
No; but if they do, it's the parents who should be held liable for disregarding important safety information.
This whole debate is symptomatic of some bigger cultural problem. It reminds me of when some kid shoots themselves with a gun and then the community is all 'too bad, so sad' and no charges are brought against the parent because they've been through the 'tragedy' of losing a child. Well that's tragic for them but it was fatal for the child, and dead children are not getting any justice when their negligent parents are let off the hook for causing the death of another person.
I mean, if I as an adult was hanging out with you and then I died because you handed me something that looked like a can of coke but was actually a hand grenade, then you'd be charged with manslaughter for failing to apprise me of the risk. But when small children get hold of guns and kill themselves (or worse, kill another kid) that's frequently just treated as 'the cost of our 2nd amendment freedom' or some bullshit. there are a lot of cases where parents get off with no legal penalty because the death of a child is so painful, even though they're clearly responsible. That does not make it OK to push the liability onto some third party who wasn't present and who supplied a a dangerous product with a detailed warning about the risks involved in it suse which people chose to ignore.
How about teenagers who play with fireworks and die? Do we need to ban fireworks? Or do we just need parents to educate their children that fireworks are dangerous.
http://www.poison.org/articles/2012-oct/toy-magnets-are-dang...
> Avoid the use of magnetic beads as fake body piercings.