![]() MEGA Brands, which buys its magnets in China, looks to be just such a company, according to records that the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission provided to Congressional investigators examining problems with magnet toys. But if problems arise with the goods, the companies selling them can impede understaffed consumer protection regulators who are hamstrung in their efforts to get the products off the shelves. A hot new technology produced cheaply in China creates a highly profitable product for its maker. Still, the recalls that have been announced have not been followed very strenuously by sellers and manufacturers, until recently.” ![]() “But these are educational toys, and I’m not ready to say the answer is to take them off the market. “If the products were taken off the market then the danger would go away,” he said. Oestreich, pediatric radiologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and one of the first physicians to recognize the ills associated with ingesting magnets. ![]() “They are neat, inviting and look like candy,” said Alan E. That means parents and even health care professionals can be fooled. Unfortunately, doctors say, the symptoms that result when a child swallows a magnet are usually no different from a stomachache, cold or flu. A child in Washington State died on Thanksgiving Day in 2005 after he swallowed several magnets from a Magnetix set. More than two dozen incidents involving magnet toys have been recorded since 2003, according to the Web site of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which has regulatory oversight of the industry. Now the toys are also appearing in lawsuits brought by parents of children who, like William, swallowed or inhaled the magnets and required complex surgery. Instead, they rip through tissue as the magnetic forces draw them together in an tight clump, doctors say.įor years, Magnetix construction toys, a product of MEGA Brands of Montreal, have been ubiquitous at birthday parties, Christmas and Hanukkah celebrations, and anywhere else the 10-and-under crowd gives or receives presents. He eventually underwent surgery to remove the magnets and mend his intestines: the magnets are so strong that if more than one is swallowed, they do not pass through a child’s digestive system. William swallowed them and became seriously ill, according to documents filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California. Its colorful, tiny plastic rods, with powerful micro-magnets at each end that gripped shiny ball bearings, made the set a cool construction toy.Ī few months later, some of the miniature magnets fell out of their plastic casings. WILLIAM FINLEY was almost 4 years old when his grandmother gave him a Magnetix building set for Christmas in 2004.
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