cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/45088835
A 13-year-old boy in New Zealand swallowed up to 100 high-power magnets he bought on Temu, forcing surgeons to remove tissue from his intestines, doctors said on Oct 24.
After suffering four days of abdominal pain, the unnamed teen was taken to Tauranga Hospital on the North Island.
“He disclosed ingesting approximately 80 to 100 5x2mm high-power (neodymium) magnets about one week prior,” said a report by hospital doctors in the New Zealand Medical Journal.
The magnets, which have been banned in New Zealand since January 2013, were bought on online shopping platform Temu, they said.
An X-ray showed the magnets had clumped together in four straight lines inside the child’s intestines.
“These appeared to be in separate parts of bowel adhered together due to magnetic forces,” they said.
[…]
Surgeons operated to remove the dead tissue and retrieve the magnets, and the child was able to return home after an eight-day spell in hospital.
“This case highlights not only the dangers of magnet ingestion but also the dangers of the online marketplace for our paediatric population,” said the authors of the paper, Dr Binura Lekamalage, Dr Lucinda Duncan-Were and Dr Nicola Davis.
Surgery for ingestion of magnets can lead to complications later in life such as bowel obstruction, abdominal hernia and chronic pain, they said.
[…]
I have very little sympathy for any 13 year old dumb enough to eat magnets. I have zero sympathy for any 13 year old that ate a hundred of them.
Not gonna lie, banning 5x2mm magnets is insane. They’re very useful, I’ve seen countless DIY projects or 3D print models that use them and in general they’re just handy. It seems insane to me to ban them for such a reason. There are infinite ways in which children can hurt themselves, should we ban stoves because they can get hot? That ban sounds a bit too much to me.
I like to think as the surgeons were removing the magnets they asked themselves “Magnets, how do they work?”
They should have just dunked him in water. Problem solved. /s
How is Temu allowed to sell items which are explicutly banned in that country?
Customs cannot possibly scan every package coming in.
Parcel gets marked as childs toy.
Honestly pretty good chance it gets through.
What the hell is wrong with NZ? Are they trying to out nanny-state the UK?
Yea I feel like Temu is not at fault here, but rather, a lack of parents and a lack of brain
How do we know this wasnt a stupid TikTok trend like the forbidden fruit/tidepod thing?
Maybe ban or actively filter that shit first?
Reading helps.
The magnets, which have been banned in New Zealand since January 2013, were bought on online shopping platform Temu.
As an older Queer, i gotta tell you “They are bad because it’s illegal” is not a good argument
And? If you need to ban magnets country wide, the issue is probably the country’s education system, not the magnets or the seller of the magnets.
You know what else helps? Having a brain, and parents that aren’t incompetent.
Yeah, having a brain is generally helpful. Just think before you type.
Low quality ragebait
No it’s still parents and brain related.
The degree ignorance and abomination of some of the comments here in this thread is another reason to not use Temu or a similar platform.
Not trying to defend temu, they are definitely careless enough to breach way bigger restrictions than this. However, don’t just ignore the rest of the context here.
- Almost no country bans small magnets
- Almost no child eats 100s of them
- It is easy for a store so vast to not know about a restriction so specific and so unusual
It’s unreasonable of you to only direct blame to Temu (which are know to be negligent and aggressive at testing the limits of what they can get away with) in this particular, unusual case.
And they laugh at the USA because Kinder eggs with toys in them are banned.
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Even I know not to eat magnets ffs.
And you’re a dumbass
Exactly!
Why are kids eating magnets now?
Six seven, obviously.
60-70* We have now changed the meme.
Bullshit propaganda to try to soften age restrictions coming in to fkin everything.
This is fucking stupid. A 13 year old is old enough to read the “don’t fucking eat this you dumbass” labels on the packaging. Do you know how useful neodymium magnets are? You’re gonna just ban them cuz this kid’s dumb enough to swallow a hundred fucking rare earth magnets and didn’t go to the doctor for half a week? Stupid
I had to double take at neodymium — wtf!!! Neodymium is completely standard for audio drivers, where the choice of the magnet is actually very important! My good old Philips 2XHR literally proudly advertise on the shell that they have a 50mm neodymium dynamic driver inside them… banning them is ridiculous
Yeah stop banning everything that can hurt you because ONE person does something stupid. Like we say in my language, one time is zero times. Everything can hurt you. If many people start doing it, maybe it’s time to consider a ban.
They’re banned since 2014 because apparently multiple people had the idea to eat them for whatever reason
What the shit aotearoa
Next they’re going to ban CR2032 button cells
(I was gonna put a /s at the end but I can vividly imagine that happening now :/ )
In Australia CR2032s have a double wall thick plastic blister packaging that is basically impossible to open.
You need scissors AND some time.
This is an example of a sensible control. Double walled, difficult to open packages may be a small inconvenience for adults, but it makes it near impossible for a toddler to open. Button cell batteries are seriously dangerous if swallowed.
Banning neodymium magnets is fucking stupid, and unfortunately the world seems to be heading in the direction of banning everything in the name of “safety”.
Same in the US, apparently. I bought some to replace my car key remote battery. Guess what I don’t have in my car? Any kind of scissors.
Not to harp on you but one of those old school keychain Swiss Army knives should be on your key ring
Knife
In public
Not looking for a stiff fine or gaol time. Yes, a Swiss Army Knife on your keyring is considered a dangerous weapon here too.
(Legally, there is an exception for Utility knives, if you ‘have a good reason’ but it’s never given, people have been fined for having box cutters)
Usually I carry a little Leatherman folding knife, but I didn’t grab it that morning because I was just stepping out to replace a battery. I didn’t expect it to be a whole ordeal.
Don’t forget the ink
Not sure if you’re aware, but Duracell and probably others coat button batteries in a chemical that tastes bad in order to discourage ingestion.
I see where these regulations are coming from, but we can’t just ban away anything that could be harmful. I just recently bought a bunch of magnets like these for a using in 3D printed models. I don’t have any kids, but I do have pets and so they’re stored away in their own case and not left around. People just need to be responsible. I mean, we don’t ban bleach but you sure as hell shouldn’t drink it!
I was at a company picknic this summer and was watching people trying to play a pitiful version of Lawn Darts. The darts were weighted but would just bounce off the ground and ruin a good shot. Lawn darts, or darts of any kind, simply don’t work as a game when you take the pointy end away. I will say though, that a company outing where there’s people milling about is not a good place to play lawn darts, so I wouldn’t have used the real ones here even if you could.
Proper product packaging, like we use in medicine canisters, and perhaps an extra disclaimer/waiver on purchase is the way to go on these things IMO.
The magnets, which have been banned in New Zealand since January 2013, were bought on online shopping platform Temu, they said They did not. One could argue that the ban may or may not make sense (preferably after looking up the specifics), but your statement is wrong.
I know the ban was before the event, you get what I meant.
I am so confused. Why did he eat them? Magnets are banned in New Zealand since 2013? Are they marketed as special eating magnets?
yeah like this post is so weird lol
it kind of feels like a dream news
Small high-powered magnets, specifically
Small strong magnets are harmless to play with – but if they are ingested or inhaled, they can become attracted to each other and join up in the digestive system. If left untreated, this can result in major tissue damage, sepsis and even death.
So basically banned for this exact reason.
It’s fine if you only eat one, though. Just make sure it’s out before eating another one. 🤷♂️
This is exactly what I do and it’s never bothered me.
In…inhaled…?
Sniffing magnets get you fucked up.
They’re pretty small and kids like to stick things up their noses.
That’s unusual for a teenager to do, I’m curious why he did that. My first guess would be a developmental delay vs a dare?
How else does one become magneto?
Teens eat Tide pods on what’s essentially a dare.
Most of those occured after mainstream reporting. Usually it goes like this, some weird trend happens online, some real, some ironic, some making fun of said trend as if they were real, mainstream media picks up the story and signal boosts to the rest of the country, teens see the trend on clips of the news story and copies it, boom sudden epidemic of said trend. These trends, or memes suddenly propogate with great effect, not unlike a biological spread really.
Because our children being fucking dumb enough that 86 of them ate LAUNDRY DETERGENT is an issue.
It’s true that since the Tide Pod Challenge began, the American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPC) has received 86 reports of teenagers intentionally ingesting laundry detergent. Yet at the end of last year, the AAPC reported that over 10,500 children under the age of five were exposed to laundry pods in 2017 (for example ingesting, inhaling, or absorbing the detergent). If we are going to have a mass panic about poisonings, ten thousand children are clearly in greater danger than less than a hundred teens. So why was it that only the Tide Pod Challenge that made pearl-clutching headlines across the globe?
I think the bigger problem is that adults focus on issues that are marketed to us than the issues that actually exist
Direct focus to a moral panic, no need to look at the real issues that could hit the bottom line.
Their grandparents used to chew on lead paint chips so lets not pretend this is new
Lead is sweet which makes this an unfair comparison
So is antifreeze and I don’t remember the drink antifreeze challenge so idk about that. Not to mention the reason people chose tide pods was because of the sensory feeling they gave dissolving in your mouth, so it’s a lot more similar than you make it out to be. Just a case of taste vs texture.
There have been multiple instances a while back of people in northern Canadian “dry” communities being poisoned from drinking antifreeze and pop/soda.
“only”!?
Pica?
Teens are dumb.
That’s true. But they don’t normally eat 100 magnets.
Just laundry tabs. Lol
adults these days are also fucking stupid and incompetent
god I fucking love generalisations
All generalisations are great.
🥇
The brain is not fully developed till your 30’s.
No need to brag
Where they banned in all their various applications? Because I had a scare when my 2-year-old granddaughter found a box with a magnetic latch and the magnet had been torn out. We thought she ate it. But after scouring the area we found it, and it’s a thin neodymium magnet. Went through the whole house making sure boxes like that were out of her reach.
One magnet is harmless. The problem is when you eat more than one, and they pinch their way through the intestine.
Or a magnet and some other ferrous metal. That might be more likely than multiple magnets sometimes.
