>" Although these products are labeled and designed for adults, they can easily find their way into the hands and mouths of children."
By that argument, any and all potentially dangerous products must be banned. No power tools, firearms, knives, lighters, or small pieces of matter may be legally sold or possessed in the United States.
The danger with small magnets like this is that, just like you did in this comment, people simply don't understand that they're more dangerous than other "small pieces of matter" no matter how many warnings the companies put on the packaging. Most other small items, even fairly sharp ones, generally pass through the digestive system without incident, but magnets stick together and trap intestinal tissue causing tissue necrosis and death within days without surgery. Lest you think I'm singling you out somehow, every discussion I've seen on this issue has unintentionally demonstrated the complete ineffectiveness of the labelling.
Here's what most people don't understand about these magnets: Once you play with them for a bit, you realize there's only a very limited number of things you can do with them. Pretty quickly, you discover one of the limited number of things is stuff like making fake ear rings or nose rings etc. If you count the number of thin skin folds on the human body, there's only a couple (ear lobes, nostril, cheek, tongue, maybe eyelid and various parts of the genitalia). A significant portion of those are an orifice into the digestive tract.
What you find happens is that kids start off making ear rings and then graduate onto making tongue rings and the tongue is just thick enough that the attachment is weak and it presents a high risk of swallowing.
Here's the second thing that most people fail to appreciate: The CSPS's main concern was not the absolute level of danger, it was the how non-obvious the threat model is. There are plenty of things that are far more dangerous on an absolute level but are allowed because most people understand the risk model and can take appropriate steps to mitigate.
If you asked a thousand people who previously knew nothing about the magnets, what they thought the main danger was, people would talk about the potential choking hazard or the chemicals in the lining maybe being toxic but I bet virtually nobody would ever think about intestinal pinching. You could have your child swallow one of these magnets every week and see them come out fine and be completely blase and then the one week they swallow two, they're suddenly in need of life threatening surgery.
I don't have any strong opinions on whether these things should be banned or not but I think the CSPSs case is a lot stronger that what's commonly presented.
man, i understand your logic, and i many cases i follow it myself. In this case the court is on your side, so not sure that me have much new to explore, i just wanted to mention the [failed] arguments of the other side that i'm sympathetic to in this case. I'm not against those magnets personally and think they should be available, it is just the situation that millions people have them lying around is really a danger. Not sure what can be done to make the situation great for everybody. At least in case of firearms, while they are available, they aren't just lying around easily accessible to children. Power tools, knives, lighters - it has been always, even in childhood, pretty much clear how they do the damage and how to handle them safely. Imagine though a power tool with non-widely known, say surprising, mode of injuring people, and i bet we'd see a bunch of such new injuries and probably the tool will be banned.
And this one http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/03/florida-mom-face... . Not for debating the 2nd (i myself think that the language of the 2nd is clear in actually granting one freedom to have even nukes). Just find it very illustrative that while firearms should be available (as 2nd states), some people just shouldn't have it. Again, have no idea how to implement it.
> ...it is just the situation that millions people have them lying around is really a danger.
24 incidents per year [0] (or -assuming only one million sets are out there- one incident per ~41,600 sets out there) doesn't seem like much of a danger. For comparison this [2] leads me to calculate that there are ~141 serious accidental poison exposures per 41,600 children out there. [3]
By all means, levy a serious penalty for the importation, production, or sale of inadequately or improperly labelled SREM magnet sets. But the actual danger of said sets really appears to be overstated by the CPSC.
[3] Poison control centers report 42.6 exposures per 1000 kids 6 and younger. NPDS reports that 8% of all reported poison exposures resulted in a moderate, or major effect. So, 42.60.0841.6. This isn't the right way to answer the question "How many young kids are seriously injured by poison exposure?", but it's certainly not a bad way to get an estimate.
I might be reading this wrong, but it seems that there's an import ban on these magnets? From the first item in the FAQ in the article: "Even though Zen Magnets and the included warnings have been found to be without flaw, there is still a nationwide import ban."
Edit: This [0] is linked to elsewhere in the discussion. It seems to support the assertion that there's an import ban.
The main difference is more that small children often put small objects in their mouths, toy or not. Most tools, knives, etc. are stowed away from the reach of children, these small magnets can be used on refrigerators or desks, etc, things these children readily have access to and frequent and consequently could wrongly ingest them.
As the ALJ found, the problem isn't that the magnets may pose a hazard when ingested, the problem is the possible lack of sufficient labelling, instruction, and up-front warning about the hazards of such magnets.
Why do people make tools, knives, or corrosive chemicals inaccessible to those who don't have enough sense to take care when handling such objects? Because they are forewarned about the dangers of said objects.
Moreover, the ALJ failed to find any significant evidence that the adults who are purchasing these magnets are being any more reckless with them than they are any other hazardous object they might have in their house. From the article:
> “The Agency was unable to sufficiently and credibly correlate any SREM injuries directly to Zen Magnets or Neoballs. The lack of credible evidence here is telling.” And regarding the CPSC’s (Epidemiology) Elephant in the Room, that easily disproven (yet commonly repeated by media) CPSC injury estimate of 2,900 “magnet set” ingestions from 2009 to 2013: “These numbers are insignificant to show any specific, identifiable population, particularly given the mass amount of magnets purchased and already on the market.”
From the fact that they had to change their packaging, several times, to make it clear that these are not toys and are not to be used by young children?
EDIT: Packaging did not include "keep away from all children" and had "age: 13+" and "toy" on the packaging, and were sometimes sold in stores that exclusively sold toys for children.
After regulation the manufacturers changed the packaging several times, changing word "toy" to "desktoy", stopped them being sold in children's toy shops and told retailers to keep them away from children's toys, removed the "13+" age limit, included "keep away from all children", and included stronger warnings.
I read that more as attempting to appease the CPSC and avoid an import ban and mandatory recall. It's abundantly clear that the CPSC has chosen to take actions that are substantially out of line with the actual level of hazard posed by such products.
Anyway, do you have access to complete photos of all of the various revs of the packaging? I'm interested in seeing if there was ever a point at which a reasonable person would look at the packaging and accompanying instructional material and get the impression that either
* These would be okay things to give to children who would be unable to understand that swallowing them might be hazardous.
or
* There isn't any significant hazard posed by swallowing the magnets.
> I read that more as attempting to appease the CPSC and avoid an import ban and mandatory recall.
I'm not sure what you're saying here. They were careless with the packaging and didn't make clear the risks, until they were regulated, and they resisted the regulation until they were faced with a ban.
> It's abundantly clear that the CPSC has chosen to take actions that are substantially out of line with the actual level of hazard posed by such products.
I'm not sure it is abundantly clear.
Toys have very strict standards requirements. These items are sold as toys, alongside other toys, albeit (more recently) sold to adults not children.
But even though they're not sold to adults there were many children being injured by these magnets - more serious injuries than other toys. You can't (and shouldn't) eliminate all risk, but you should take some effort to reduce risk of death or surgery.
> I'm not sure what you're saying here. They were careless with the packaging...
I expect that some manufacturers were. Until we see the packaging we can't determine if Zen Magnets was being careless.
The responsible distributors that I've seen all have the same story: "No amount of packaging changes have satisfied the CPSC. They won't be satisfied until noone is permitted to manufacture within or import SREM magnet sets into the US.".
I've looked at the rejected packaging from responsible distributors. The packaging makes it abundantly clear that those are not children's toys. I've read the documentation shipped inside Buckyballs magnet sets. It makes the dangers of ingestion of the magnets in the sets very clear.
Because what I can see with my eyes differs so wildly from what the CPSC is asserting about manufacturer's packaging, and because (as the ALJ found) what the CPSC is asserting about injury rates and the like isn't actually credible, I take what the CPSC has to say about the topic with a very large grain of salt.
It's one thing to prohibit the sale of inadequately or improperly marked SREM magnet sets. It's another thing entirely to ban the production and/or importation of all SREM magnet sets, regardless of how well marked they are.
I agree that their early packaging was inadequate. I had an early set, and I don't recall it conveying how dangerous swallowing two or more magnets can be. (Swallowing one is fine unless you need an MRI.) They were required to update their warning labels, and I'm fine with that.
My problem is that they'd updated the warnings as required and then were hit with a blanket ban that applies regardless of how and where they are labeled and sold. It's not even about punishing a particular company that was misbehaving; it applies to all potential sellers.
That's stupid. There's no good reason why an informed adult should be forbidden to buy little magnets.
By that argument, any and all potentially dangerous products must be banned. No power tools, firearms, knives, lighters, or small pieces of matter may be legally sold or possessed in the United States.