I have heard repeatedly about the danger of ingesting buckeyballs and that emergency surgery is then required. I have not found any published papers reporting this, and it sounds like a really suspect claim to me. Has there ever been a verified report bowel obstruction or perforation? If surgery was performed, why was it necessary?
Are you talking about rare earth magnets?
WARNING RANT AHEAD:
I hate that they corrupted the true meaning of buckyball
ETA: Yes they are dangerous - the real issue is that small kids swallow several and they magnetically attach to each other and obstruct the bowel. One alone isn’t as much of a problem.
The list of references in the Wikipedia article on these toys has links to a couple of articles about kids who needed surgery after swallowing the magnets. It’s not a suspect claim. The US Consumer Product Safety organized a recall because of the danger. The CPSC press release says that they have “received 54 reports of children and teens ingesting this product, with 53 of these requiring medical interventions.”
Really? How did you search for papers? A quick search of “Magnet bowel perforation” Pubmed pulls up 56 results, mostly case studies.
Ditto the rant, and thank you for the link. I came to this thread because I was curious how a mere shape could present a health hazard.
Teens? Really?
One story I remember hearing was of a kid or teen who put two of these spherical balls in her mouth, one on top and the other on the bottom of her tongue, pretending she had a tongue piercing and then accidentally swallowed one or both.
I found two case reports. One of these where of ingested Buckyballs, and had resulted in perforation. The other was about 30 large magnets, and the accompanying x-rays made it clear that there was a problem. Then there were a ton of reports that were all the same two. It is clear that a number of children had endoscopy or laproscopic surgery when it was not necessary. One had an endoscope remove a collection from the colon. Basically I found an occasional and very rare case report. And lots of over-hype.
Yeah, I can see how it could only be case reports. Hard to design an ethical experiment.
From what I understand what can happen is the magnets are attracted to each other through folds in the intestines, and pinch hard enough to force their way through.
Incidentally, I was told that cows are occasionally fed magnets to clear out any iron (old nails, pieces of fencing, etc) they have swallowed, which apparently happens at they graze.
My attitude has been that they’re no more dangerous than an awful lot of other things around the house that are perfectly legal - guns, Drano, cars, stairs, clothes, siblings etc. but that they were targeted because they were marketed as toys (not marketed at children, of course) and don’t have any other obvious purpose that makes them necessary. In addition, they ARE fun to play with and would be attractive to small children who might not remember “don’t put in mouth”.
Whether there’ve been lots of surgeries I can’t tell; the CPSC reports I’ve found don’t seem to have a lot of details.
FYI, youcan still get spherical magnets, just not at Buckyballs sizes.
Occasionally? Think common practice.
But only one magnet, so no worries about damaging their internals in a similar fashion. My grandfather had been a dairy farmer, and even after his farming days were over (still on the farm but renting out the land to nearby farmers), he had a couple of those cow magnets stuck to his fridge to hold papers/bills/etc.
The basic problem with BuckyBalls was that kids would do what Dewey Finn said: put them in their mouth. Then someone would slap them on the back or they would forget they had them in their and trip, or something.
Swallowing one magnet is not a problem. This shall pass. The problem was when you swallowed two or more of the magnets. They would get stuck on each other through the intestinal walls and cause necrosis of the tissue.
As mentioned above, there were some 56+ cases, and about 12 of them were determined to be caused by actual BuckyBalls (not one of the other similar products). All of them were caused by misuse of the product by kids who should not have had the product in the first place (the BuckyBalls had very clear package warnings).
Despite the fact that this was 12 cases out of millions of packs sold the CPSD clamped down and BuckyBalls were pretty much destroyed as a company.
Bucky balls as a company specifically marketed their product at children’s toy stores. Their original safety labeling was not sufficient for the CPSD, which had already resulted in action be the CPSD and a recall for relabeling
When the CPSD was contacting manufactures and requesting that companies quit importing and selling the product and informed companies they intended to ban the product from the US market, the other manufacturers complied with the request and were allowed to sell off remaining uncased(basically what wasn’t in containers) product. Bucky Balls basically said ‘it’s our only product we are going to fight the CPSD every bit of the way.’ Bucky balls has basically taken the brunt of the damage because of their actions and refusal to cooperate, they were not an innocent victim.
Bucky Balls sold products at children’s toy stores that were not appropriately age requirement marked. Which is why they have been the easy target for lawsuits. The other companies selling the product weren’t selling at Toy’R’Us and in the places they were selling them they had always been marked with the required labeling. When the CPSD requested updated labeling the other companies were compliant while Bucky Balls refused to honer the request until it was mandated.
I think banning the item was a bit ridiculous, but it is what it is. I think Bucky Balls as a company deserved what they’ve gotten. The owner of the company is an asshole anyway, so fuck that guy.
I’m sorry that is wrong.
There was a voluntary recall early on, yes. And after that recall BuckyBalls did everything the CPSD asked of them and more. Letters were sent out almost monthly with strict instructions to vendors on how & where to display the product. The products were marked clearly as not being for children. They also ceased displaying their product at toy conventions, sticking with gift conventions. Other companies making the same continued to display at Toy Shows.
Despite following CPSD’s instructions fully, the CPSD decided that they must cease and desist selling BuckyBalls. BuckyBalls resisted, naturally, as this was what their company did. They tried to reign things in at first by limiting sales to just from their website so they could avoid having vendors sell to children, but even this was not enough for the CPSD.
Unfortunately, some missteps in the defense of the product were made (dude, don’t blame Obama).
Your dislike of the owner is coloring your view of the events. He is an asshole but that does not mean he deserves to have a mutli-million dollar company destroyed because the CPSD got a bigger bug up their but than they did when they tried to regulate bicycles.