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Comment by pippy | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting many countries such as the US, UK and NZ have banned rare earth magnets due to fear of people swallowing them. The data they used to back the banning included all products ingested, and vice wrote up an article here: http://www.vice.com/read/the-consumer-product-safety-commiss...

If a product is causing similar health risks, isn't it fair to apply the same ban to it too?

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This is not really true. What the US banned were toys and novelty items based around easily-swallowable rare earth magnets. The ban is on marketing and packaging, not on magnets themselves.

Rare earth magnets are unsuitable to be marketed as toys? Then it makes sense that metal bristle scrubbers are unsuitable to be marketed for cleaning food-prep equipment.

Strong agree.

In the cases of product being banned for safety, one of the reasons it's generally due to is the potential of swallowing it and causing harm or choking being high enough that a simple warning isn't sufficient. E.g. Buckyballs (swallow two separate groups of those and you'll be lucky to be in IC), Kinder Surprise (sucks, but somewhat understandable). The brush, while potentially dangerous, isn't probably dangerous enough to cause a ban since you don't swallow the brush as a whole and the likelihood of harm, while potentially severe, is small. It's also worth noting that things are generally banned if they'll affect children but not adults, which is a primary reason why the two examples I mentioned were banned.

> Kinder Surprise (sucks, but somewhat understandable)

I still don't understand this, the explanation I have read is that it's due to the inner plastic being totally hidden, but the potential to swallow a Kinder Surprise whole is very low, unless your kids are _really_ large.

I was going to sardonically quip that kids in the US are really large [1]. That only works if only the US bans the candy. I looked up Kinder Surprise on Wikipedia [2] and found out that Chile also bans it. So the quip doesn't work. Completely unsubstantiated, but I cynically interpret the ban as bribery purchased by Frito-Lay and General Mills to protect their Cracker Jack product [3] and breakfast cereal products. The older I get the more I realize that many seemingly "safety"-oriented rulings and legislation that strike many citizens as a faintly picayune concern to enshrine into bureaucratic machinations and fund enforcement via taxpayers are just flat-out purchased from politicians to stifle competition.

[1] http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/report-u.s-most-obese-fatt...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinder_Surprise

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_Jack

Well, Chile's ban is different than US's ban. The US bans it because it's a potential public health risk[1], because someone may choke on the toy inside, while Chile bans it because they apparently banned all kinds of advertisements and products aimed at kids that have gifts that come with the product (I don't know the rationale; there is an article linked on Wikipedia but it's in Spanish and didn't translate well. My guess is that they want to reduce childhood nutrition issues by not letting manufacturers give presents with candy.).

As an aside, if you have never had a Kinder Surprise before, there is an image on the Wikipedia page, and the egg is decent sized -- I could probably fit it in my mouth whole, but it wouldn't be comfortable. The toy inside is also inside of a capsule that I would find really hard to believe could even be swallowed because it's at least as big as a US quarter but about 1 inch tall if my memory serves me correctly, but I guess 3 kids deaths in the UK prove me wrong.

1: "The embedded non-nutritive objects in these confectionery products may pose a public health risk as the consumer may unknowingly choke on the object.", see http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/importalert_107.html.

> ...but it wouldn't be comfortable...

Yes, when I saw the size of the capsule and toys inside, I thought there were many common household items that were far, far easier to ingest, were way more within daily reach than candy, and enforcing the ruling on these toys was arguably a waste of limited taxpayer-funded manpower.

Swallowing is not the problem, it's getting the plastic egg stuck in the back of the mouth or throat, blocking the airway.

If you can get it in the front of your mouth you're already doing better than your peers and Darwin is waiting impatiently to endow you with your highly appropriate award.

> Buckyballs

Not Buckminsterfullerene, but small magnets. See here for the story: http://gizmodo.com/how-buckyballs-fell-apart-1609183224

I genuinely don't understand the Kindersurprise ban. Those plastic eggs inside are fucking huge.

Ahem.

The "many countries" is just US, NZ and Australia (not UK).

The rest of the world still trusts their citizens not to eat stuff that's not good for them.

Confirmed not banned in the UK, here's some for sale right now on Amazon's UK site: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bargain-Neodymium-Strong-Magnets-Mo...

I have ordered rare earth magnets several times and it's always interesting to inspect the packaging when they show up. Clearly there are a lot of metal parts in Royal Mail's sorting machines as they frequently arrive in an absolutely tattered padded envelope, usually with tape patches over big holes ripped in the side.

If you can find some N52 grade magnets it's worth ordering them just for the novelty value. Hand someone a roll and ask them to peel one off the end. Or, stick one on the refrigerator with a note "pull this magnet off" and see who falls for it. They are so strong it's like seeing an alien technology in a sci-fi flick.

Probably worth finding a more reputable supplier. Mine come packaged inside a specially designed large EPS container that put enough distance between the magnets and the outer carton to not cause problems in shipping or storage.

If you can find some N52 grade magnets it's worth ordering them just for the novelty value

This 1013 lb pull N52 magnet could also be entertaining. Maybe also useful for checking grilled meat for metallic objects.

https://www.kjmagnetics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=BZX0Z0Y0-N52...

I'm guessing one that large would simply pull any metallic objects straight out of the meat, even if it were on the other side. Seriously, they sell smaller ones than that coated in epoxy for pulling up boat anchors when the anchor chain has broken. The ones I have are tiny, watch battery size and I can barely pull them apart. It simply isn't possible to hook your fingernail under one and lift it from a metal surface. You have to slide it to a corner and grab it. Hard to describe, but when you first handle them it's like "how the hell is this possible?".

Can confirm entertainment levels. Used similar magnets for a research project. They would start to shuffle and move ~30cm from any large magnetic metal piece. The fear was real when handling them.

rare earth magnets are not banned in the US per se. They are banned from children's toys. But I don't let my kids play with wire brushes either.

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