Zen Magnets Wins CPSC Case (opens in new tab)

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.

No. It's not the magnets that were being banned. It was the packaging and marketing of the magnets.

> No power tools, firearms, knives, lighters, or small pieces of matter

These things are not marketed as toys to small children.

Everyone old enough knows that guns are dangerous (ADDED: and we in the US gun community put a LOT of effort into this, e.g. https://eddieeagle.nra.org/ and have decreased fatal gun accidents from ~800 to ~600 per year in a period when both the population and number of guns owned by it increased by very roughly 50%).

Very few know that swallowing two or more small magnets can result in death in a few days, even with medical treatment, especially if the treatment is "too late". That's very much unlike other "small bits of metal", to which I'd include small ammunition (although the commonly unplated lead bullets in .22 LR ammo would add a lead exposure threat).

And then there's the little matter of the 2nd Amendment, we have no Constitutionally enshrined right to keep and bear small magnets, which are also fantastically less useful than guns.

For that matter, in the 1970's heyday of US gun control, the CPSC was explicitly banned from the area of firearms and ammo. This is not unique, there are many other things like "tobacco, motor vehicles, pesticides, aircraft, aircraft engines and boats" (http://www.nssf.org/newsroom/writers/guide/regulations.cfm) where the regulation is done by other units of the government, generally ones with domain knowledge. E.g. pesticides touch on at least three areas, safety to those handling and using them, plus food and environmental safety, that's more like the remit of OSHA (which can cover the much smaller consumer uses) plus the FDA and EPA.

I have a friend whose child died as a result of swallowing two magnets.

The child wasn't even small — school-age. Made a bet with friends that he'll be able to swallow a magnet, and did. Then repeated the same thing next day (this is what's fatal, as it leads to intestinal pinching). Nobody knew. When symptoms started appearing and they got to a hospital, it was already too late.

While I wouldn't go as far as preventing the sale of magnets, education is definitely important. People should be aware of the extreme and silent danger that small, spherical, and easy to swallow magnets pose to their children. As your comment shows, many are not aware.

My grandfather was actually the first person to sue the US government (and particularly interesting for this case, it was against the CPSC) and have it actually come to vote in congress. My grandfather was the president of Marlin Toy Company, and in 1972 the CPSC mistakenly kept one of its products (the Flutter Ball) on the banned products list, and they refused to fix it until the next version of the list came out.

Surprisingly I can't find much on the case online (Some links below), and my Grandfather doesn't like to talk about it too much (though I have a box of legal documents from the case plus some articles). You can find more by looking up Edward Sohmers and the Marlin Toy Company.

https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal75...

https://books.google.com/books?id=cyU_fdnWhD8C&pg=PA22550&lp...

TPP is not law. TPP is a proposed treaty that is far far far from being ratified and hopefully never does.

Even if ratified today, I doubt Zen could use it as it was not law at the time of the action.